Performance - Related Events

Alex,
I agree performance testing is a discipline and is becoming more accepted as a skill set and domain space of its own. I am less sure it is an engineering discipline, as within certain contexts this has a specific meaning and implications that may not be able to be met within the "proving/assurance" domain space of testing.
I am also less sure it is based around the skills you mention, though to some extent it could be. Though we base many of the tests on functions we are not driven in the same way as to prove the functional requirements but to look at and comprehend the wider system aspects including sequencing of events and timings of activities. As for the capacity planning, in part yes however this may also work at the review of the architectural models too.
The “Ultimate” performance testers is a multi skilled person, or a very functional team, I will blog my thoughts further on this over time, as they are still evolving despite having been involved in performance testing on and off for the last decade.
The reason for the reference as it being a "black art" is that for many not involved in this area it still is. The majority of the toolsets from vendors are not cheap or easy to learn. The full range of skills and domain knowledge is not widely held, and the remit is so diverse it is hard for any one to be a "complete" performance test/analyst in all domains.
I understand it has become more important and I also believe it has higher prominence but there is still a level of protectionism to the skills base amongst many consultants who make it out to be harder then it is, though this is also slowly changing with articles such as Scott Barber's in the May/June 2005 Better Software Magazine.
I know for me one of the key skill’s for all forms of testing is the ability to communicate effectively in different contexts to a wide audience, an area that performance test is currently not strong.

Neill McCarthy
"Agile Testers of the World UNIT! "

I believe performance testing is emerging as an engineering discipline of its own, based on “classic” functional testing from one side, and system performance analysis and capacity planning from another side. It grows quickly - reasons probably are quick growth of distributed systems and systems designed to handle huge loads (Internet). I guess that almost each big corporation or vendor of distributed systems has a performance team (or a few) now. But probably that's it: if you want to work here the choice is a big corporation or a vendors of big distributed systems or a consulting organization working with former two.

I believe that it takes more from tuning/performance analysis/capacity planning than from functional testing. That art (one good book here is "The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis" by Raj Jain, 1991) is old and well established, but usually almost unknown to developers and functional testers. CMG exists since 1975 and each database/OS vendor has a tuning/performance class.

Alexander,
thanks for these, though looking at the dates I have missed the chance to submit to most of these, though I am considering depending on the dates seeing if I can get involved with WOPR. I am most sorry that I did not catch the STP conference CFP as looking at least years programme it looked interesting - I will keep on eye on it for next year.
It still strikes me as performance testing is still a minority sport which comes with it's own host of "black arts" to many even in testing, odd as its importance as a system ability seems to becoming more important.

Neill McCarthy
"Agile Testers of the World UNIT !"