A beginner's review on IBM Rational Performance Tester
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
In my organization, we are a separate entity where we own a Java-based public facing Web application. Since it is public facing, performance is one of the critical criteria to be able to meet the expectation of the client. We have strict SLAs related to the performance of the application.
Therefore, we rigorously conduct tests on the application to make sure that we are meeting all the requirements stated by the clients. To test this, we were in search of a performance testing tool which is compatible, and adequate with our application. We finalized a couple of tools including IBM Rational Performance Tester, and finally made a decision to go ahead with IBM RPT, for the following reasons:
1. My Organisation recommends using either IBM RPT or JMeter for performance testing of Java based web apps. This recommendation comes from a detailed research which also involves employee surveys and feedback.
2. For a new team (or for a beginner) IBM RPT is a great tool to start with. Anyone familiar with performance testing understands the importance and complexity of data correlation, of which most of the part is automatically handled by RPT! And for the remaining, it is a piece of cake to do it compared to other tools.
3. RPT provides ways to conduct different types of performance testing with its Performance Scheduler, which is really easy and convenient to create. Also when a test is in progress, it provides a very broad view of all the critical metrics to judge the performance along with graphs.
4. Great and detailed Performance Reports supporting several formats.
5. Reasonable price compared to its competitors.
Pros
- Data Parameterisation/ Data Correlation is made simpler compared to its competitors
- Distributed Load Testing is easier to set up
- Performance metric gathering while a test is in progress
- Th look and Feel really helps a beginner to understand and work with.
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.
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.
