The Art of Application Performance Testing

Author: Ian Molyneaux
Publisher: O'Reilly
Pages: 160
ISBN: 978-0596520663
Aimed at: Testing beginners
Rating: 3
Pros: A reasonable overview
Cons: Very short and very hands-off
Reviewed by: Mike James

This is a book that talks about Application Performance testing rather than telling you how to do it. While there is lots of advice on the desirable properties of testing tools none are discussed in detail and this is certainly not a practical primer.

Chapter One starts off with the question that we all probably know the answer to - "Why performance test?". Chapter Two goes on to consider the fundamentals of effective performance testing some of which is fairly common sense  - get a code freeze, provide sufficient test data, allocate enough time etc. Chapter Three discusses the process of performance testing by way of two case studies.

Chapter Five outlines the problem of interpreting the results of performance testing with the aim of tracking down the root cause. This is a welcome discussion of a very general problem. The problem is so general however that you can't expect simple ready made solutions. In this case it is vital that the tester understands the system architecture. The final chapter is on the way individual technologies affect performance testing - Ajax, Citrix , HTTP, Java, Oracle, SAP and OSA. Each section is very short and most don't say anything really helpful beyond the fact that the technology exists with its basic characteristic.

This is very much a "hands off" approach to the subject and it might help you think about the overall problem of organising and starting application performance testing. The one really good piece of advice in the book is "start performance testing early - ridiculously early if possible".

Only buy this book if you are a beginner at performance testing or want to explain to management the sorts of things you should be doing. This very short book doesn't cover much ground.

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Webbots, Spiders, and Screen Scrapers

Author: Michael Schrenk
Publisher: No Starch Press
Pages: 362
ISBN: 978-1593273972
Aimed at: PHP developers
Rating: 4
Pros: Practical with lots of projects
Cons: Doesn't describe big bots/spiders
Reviewed by: Ian Elliot

It's important to note the subtitle, "A Guide to Developing Internet Agents with PHP/CU [ ... ]



Practical Arduino

Author: Jonathan Oxer & Hugh Blemings
Publisher: Apress
Pages:500

ISBN: 978-1430224778
Aimed at: Intermediate hardware designers
Rating: 4
Pros: Good collection of projects
Cons: Not well explained
Reviewed by: Harry Fairhead

Arduino is an open source hardware platform that can be used to design cus [ ... ]


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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 28 April 2010 14:50 )
 
 

   
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