Likelihood to Recommend Go for IBM RPT if: 1. You're testing a Java-based Web application with HTTP protocol 2. You wanted to distribute the load across machines easily 3. Your team is in learning phase/not really introduced to a wide range of performance testing tools Do not go for IBM RPT if: 1. You wanted to test REST or any other advanced protocols 2. Your system under test demands a very high user load 3. Your application is written in .NET or any other platform except Java.
Read full review Micro Focus LoadRunner and its suite of tools, specifically VuGen works wonderfully for us for all web, http/https and web service calls. We've been able to build tests for near any scenario we need with relative ease. As long as we have crafted up requirements for our scenarios / scripts to managed scope, we've had high success working with scripting and data driving. Our main tests are web service calls - typically chained together to form a full scenario with transactions measuring the journey or a similar (measure along the way) journey through a browser. For web services we will use VuGen and browser we've shifted to Tru Client I have had little-to-no experience scripting against a thick client where a ui-driven test would be required. I know its possible but quite costly due to the need to run the actual desktop client to drive tests. We've been fortunate enough to leverage http calls to represent client traffic.
Read full review Pros Live Monitoring of Performance Testing Metrics Easier Test Data Parameterization Performance Tests Scheduler Server Resource Monitoring Great Reports that can be Exported as HTML Reports Read full review It can simulate multiple users at the same time and help understand the performance. It can generate excellent reports and give insights into application performance. It is a fast tool and does not take time to perform its functions. Read full review Cons Memory utilization could have been improved.(Eats up system's RAM)! It may crash if a test is conducted with the heavy load if adequate RAM is not available in the VM/host machine. Licensing could have been made simpler. IBM's licensing method is difficult to follow. Support for protocols other than HTTP. Not really up to the current trend. Read full review HP LoadRunner with new patches and releases sometimes makes no longer support older version of various protocols like Citrix, which makes the task time-consuming when using older versions of LoadRunner for some of the cases. So it should support older version as well while upgrading. Configuring HP LoadRunner over the firewall involves lots of configuration and may be troublesome. So, there should be a script (power shell script for Windows or shell script for Linux users) to make it easy to use and with less pain. I would like to see the RunTime Viewer of Vugen in HPLoadRunner based on the browser I selected in the run-time configuration to make it feel more realistic as a real user. Licensing cost is very high when we need to perform a test on application for a specific group of users. Read full review Support Rating Customer service is not that great. It's difficult to get hold of someone if an issue is supposed to be addressed on an urgent basis. No online chat service readily available.
Read full review Alternatives Considered IBM Rational Performance Tester is better in many aspects when compared to
Apache JMeter . For example, you have ready made scripts to assist you, You have better monitoring of different performance metrics and can generate better reports that can be exported as HTML. The only downside of IBM RPT is that it can be very costly at times while
JMeter is for free which is a huge advantage. That's why we try using in our organization a combination of both as much as we can.
Read full review HP performance center stacks up very well for front end applications. Need more improvements for API performance testing.
Read full review Return on Investment Accuracy in metrics, thus improving system's performance Costs less compared to competitor like HP LoadRunner Helped the team of beginners learn things quickly Read full review The scripts created with traditional web/http protocol are not robust thus re-scripting is required after most every code drop. Troubleshooting and fixing the issue takes more time therefore in most cases we do re-scripting to keep it simple and save time. In ideal world you would rather spend more time doing testing than scripting in that case mostly you could use an Ajax TruClient protocol. This type of script will only fail when an object in the application is removed or changed completely. This way of scripting will save you more time and helps you maintain the scripts with less re-work effort on a release basis. On the long run you will have a better ROI when you use Ajax TruClient protocol for scripting. Read full review ScreenShots