Load testing of a bank processing system (front-end)

Implementation Highlights

• distributed launch of tests from several machines;
• non-standard protocols that required to use low-level recording and interaction emulation tools;
• testing in a remote mode from an external machine as was required by the security office
• treating a system under test as a “black box”- disclosure of the system architecture features was not required

The processing system was not stopped for the time of testing — all tests were run on a backup server. The results for the main server were calculated by scaling performance figures of the backup server to those of the main one. The scaling factors were obtained by three different sources of independent data on performance of hardware platforms in use. This allowed to estimate the range of possible maximum load values for the main server with an imprecision not exceeding 5–10%.

Results

The following processing system performance values are calculated: system response time, utilization of server resources depending on the workload. The results were shown both in analytical and graphical formats.
The developed test system allows to analyze system performance in varying the environment (launching background processes, replacing software modules within the processing system etc)

Technologies and Tools

The project was carried out using Rational Suite TestStudio automated testing tools which were chosen due to the project features described above.