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How effective is Visual studio test suite than load runner?

I would like to learn performance/load test a web application, but i got really confused to choose which tool to go for.

Does the scope of VSTS 2010 is better than Loadrunner, considering the cost of the license too?

PS: I'm new to performance testing, please recommend a tool which is good for a beginner. I tried Jmeter but its just a long way to go.

jessehouwing
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Vignesh Paramasivam
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3 Answers3

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I'm new to performance testing, please recommend a tool which is good for a beginner

The amount of time it takes you to become effective will be entirely dependent upon the maturity of your foundation skills which you are bringing to the discipline. Very good, robust skills and you can be effective in 90 days, with a mentor. Very weak skills and no mentor and you will languish for years. There are people in the market who have five years of experience on their resume with few useful skills

A tool is not the discipline, any more than knowledge of a particular accounting software package makes you an accountant. If you are just looking to dabble, to understand better the challenges of the role, both tool and non-tool related (tool is 5-15% of the job) then Jmeter is a fine place to start.

If you are going to use a commercial tool then honor their license requirements related to training and non-production use of training software or you will need to ask yourself, "If I am willing to compromise my ethics to violate a license agreement then why would anyone trust the output of my tests and my recommendations related to changes in the system to increase performance?"

James Pulley
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  • I have the license for VS2010, but i'm just curios about Jmeter whether i can self learn it with no mentor, but considering VS2010 i have people(dev's) around me to help if i'm stuck on it but my point is jmeter is better for performance testing, as performance test will not be effective without a tool. LR can't be affordable to me so i'm not gonna look at it. – Vignesh Paramasivam Sep 23 '13 at 13:06
  • And what's your opinion about VSTS 2010 for performance testing(I do have license for it) or do you still recommend Jmeter to go for? Please do suggest – Vignesh Paramasivam Sep 23 '13 at 13:11
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    Here are the rubs on Visual Studio: If you accept Microsoft's philosophical basis as "no testers," developers will test, and you are in an all Microsoft environment with access to source code for the application under test, then Visual Studio makes sense - A very White box approach. If you are looking at the problem as a grey or black box testing effort in a non-Microsoft development model then JMETER will be just fine. – James Pulley Sep 24 '13 at 17:20
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For perform testing you should opt for HP's loadrunner. the reason behind chosen loadrunner instead of VSTS 2010 is that Loadrunner provides a lot of sophisticated graphs that helps to analyze the performance. e.g. its provides throughput graph that is easy to understand and the though analysis can be done based on this graph. However it provides many more graphs that helps to analyze the performance of the web application.

Also with the help of Load runner the load can be divided among the machines that can be used to analyze the performance.

Also with the help of loadrunner one can break the whole scenarios into number of fractions that help to analyze the individual scenarios performance with more ease.

so its better to choose loadrunner instead of VSTS 2010.

kTiwari
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    Even Jmeter is having a throughput graph, but obviously not upto the level of LR, but it is a good one though as a open source tool compared to the cost of LR license. So can i opt for Jmeter instead of VSTS 2010? (i'm considering the cost of LR license here) – Vignesh Paramasivam Sep 23 '13 at 12:23
  • Just remember, there is more than the cost of a tool in the full cost of delivery. There is a labor quotient to deliver a defined level of output at a given quality point. Depending upon the tool you select you will have different quotients for tool and labor contribution in the final output. This is due to the designed efficiency of the tool. While a free screwdriver can be used to drive nails into a roof, there are times when the rented or purchased pneumatic nailer is a much more efficient and less overall costly option. – James Pulley Sep 24 '13 at 17:23
  • @james: ya,the implementation of the tool depends upon the requirement . and based on the tool the labor cost does count on the total project cost.but for every tool there are pros and cons. – kTiwari Sep 25 '13 at 04:41
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JMeter is very good and pretty easy to pick up, I would recommend watching some of the excellent tutorials on Youtube. VS2010 is pretty easy too and has some excellent graphing capabilities as well. The nice thing about VS2010 is the wizard which allows you to choose which test method(s) you want to run during the load test.

DarthOpto
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