As you may have noticed, things are a bit slow around QA Podcast. That's because QA Labs--the folks who run QA Podcast--was recently acquired, and we've been pretty busy with that process.

Once things settle down, we hope to relaunch QA Podcast with new sessions. If you'd like to be notified when we relaunch, enter your email address in the 'Keep Up to Date' box to the right. We promise to only email you to let you know that we've posted new episodes.

Alternately, you can always subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for your patience!

As you may have noticed, things are a bit slow around QA Podcast. That's because QA Labs--the folks who run QA Podcast--was recently acquired, and we've been pretty busy with that process.

Once things settle down, we hope to relaunch QA Podcast with new sessions. If you'd like to be notified when we relaunch, enter your email address in the 'Keep Up to Date' box to the right. We promise to only email you to let you know that we've posted new episodes.

Alternately, you can always subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for your patience!

Today we talk about that old chestnut (or bugbear, if you like) of the software industry: performance testing. We discussed this subject back in August with Keith Moon, but it's a big topic, so we thought we'd revisit it.

Wolfgang is in the studio talking with Larry Ng. Larry is a senior QA specialist at QA Labs.

• QA Podcast #11: Performance Testing with Larry Ng (MP3, 19 MB, 21:09)

Here are a few quotes from today's show:

"When the customer asks us to do performance testing, what they have in mind is usually the user response time and how the system performs under load--as in system resources and database performance. So it's not always easy to define what a 'meaningful result' means--it's not easy to define what measurements we need to gather."

"The bottom line is that when we're doing performance testing, we try to generate the load to the system by whatever means. We don't need to necessarily adhere to business scenarios. We can split it up into multiple scenarios and still generate the same load."

"In terms of metrics, most people want to see a solid result about user response time and system performance--how much CPU got used, is there enough memory to handle the load and so forth."

Technorati tags: qa quality+assurance software+testing qa+labs performance+testing load+testing server+load podcast

Today we talk about that old chestnut (or bugbear, if you like) of the software industry: performance testing. We discussed this subject back in August with Keith Moon, but it's a big topic, so we thought we'd revisit it.

Wolfgang is in the studio talking with Larry Ng. Larry is a senior QA specialist at QA Labs.

• QA Podcast #11: Performance Testing with Larry Ng (MP3, 19 MB, 21:09)

Here are a few quotes from today's show:

"When the customer asks us to do performance testing, what they have in mind is usually the user response time and how the system performs under load--as in system resources and database performance. So it's not always easy to define what a 'meaningful result' means--it's not easy to define what measurements we need to gather."

"The bottom line is that when we're doing performance testing, we try to generate the load to the system by whatever means. We don't need to necessarily adhere to business scenarios. We can split it up into multiple scenarios and still generate the same load."

"In terms of metrics, most people want to see a solid result about user response time and system performance--how much CPU got used, is there enough memory to handle the load and so forth."

Technorati tags: qa quality+assurance software+testing qa+labs performance+testing load+testing server+load podcast

Today we talk about that old chestnut (or bugbear, if you like) of the software industry: performance testing. We discussed this subject back in August with Keith Moon, but it's a big topic, so we thought we'd revisit it.

Wolfgang is in the studio talking with Larry Ng. Larry is a senior QA specialist at QA Labs.

• QA Podcast #11: Performance Testing with Larry Ng (MP3, 19 MB, 21:09)

Here are a few quotes from today's show:

"When the customer asks us to do performance testing, what they have in mind is usually the user response time and how the system performs under load--as in system resources and database performance. So it's not always easy to define what a 'meaningful result' means--it's not easy to define what measurements we need to gather."

"The bottom line is that when we're doing performance testing, we try to generate the load to the system by whatever means. We don't need to necessarily adhere to business scenarios. We can split it up into multiple scenarios and still generate the same load."

"In terms of metrics, most people want to see a solid result about user response time and system performance--how much CPU got used, is there enough memory to handle the load and so forth."

Technorati tags: qa quality+assurance software+testing qa+labs performance+testing load+testing server+load podcast

Today we talk about that old chestnut (or bugbear, if you like) of the software industry: performance testing. We discussed this subject back in August with Keith Moon, but it's a big topic, so we thought we'd revisit it.

Wolfgang is in the studio talking with Larry Ng. Larry is a senior QA specialist at QA Labs.

• QA Podcast #11: Performance Testing with Larry Ng (MP3, 19 MB, 21:09)

Here are a few quotes from today's show:

"When the customer asks us to do performance testing, what they have in mind is usually the user response time and how the system performs under load--as in system resources and database performance. So it's not always easy to define what a 'meaningful result' means--it's not easy to define what measurements we need to gather."

"The bottom line is that when we're doing performance testing, we try to generate the load to the system by whatever means. We don't need to necessarily adhere to business scenarios. We can split it up into multiple scenarios and still generate the same load."

"In terms of metrics, most people want to see a solid result about user response time and system performance--how much CPU got used, is there enough memory to handle the load and so forth."

Technorati tags: qa quality+assurance software+testing qa+labs performance+testing load+testing server+load podcast

This week we're joined by Ian Langworth and Chromatic. They're the authors of Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook. Predictably, the topic du jour is Perl and its role in QA.

This was recorded over the phone, and there's a fair bit of hiss on the line. Apologies for that--we figure that the sound quality degrades as we get multiple parties in on the call.

• QA Podcast #10: Testing with Perl with Ian Langworth and Chromatic (MP3, 19 MB, 28:20)

Here are some quotes from today's show:

"If you have other applications, such as Web applications, that Perl has testing harnesses, Perl would be an ideal tool for that sort of thing...My brother works for a large computer company testing networking equipment and things like that. It's very helpful to be able to send out a million packets a second with Perl and analyze what comes back--look at timings, look at errors, things like that."

"The advantages of testing with perl stem from the advantages of the language. For example, Perl is loosely-typed. So, even with the basic testing libraries, being able to say is the result of this action this, and not having to worry about types or other factors. It makes testing really readable, really logical and easy to interpret."

"Perl is a very appropriate language for doing extreme programming in. From the standpoint of testing or test-driven development, you want to verify the assumptions you're making in your head. Test-driven design enables you to sit down and write a test, and then write just enough code to make that test pass."

Links for this conversation's topic:

• The book on O'Reilly, and Ian and Chromatic's author pages
• Perl.com
• A list of Perl modules in the Test namespace
• An article: Testing Files and Test Modules
• An interview with Ian
• Ian's homepage
• Chromatic's homepage

This week we're joined by Ian Langworth and Chromatic. They're the authors of Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook. Predictably, the topic du jour is Perl and its role in QA.

This was recorded over the phone, and there's a fair bit of hiss on the line. Apologies for that--we figure that the sound quality degrades as we get multiple parties in on the call.

• QA Podcast #10: Testing with Perl with Ian Langworth and Chromatic (MP3, 19 MB, 28:20)

Here are some quotes from today's show:

"If you have other applications, such as Web applications, that Perl has testing harnesses, Perl would be an ideal tool for that sort of thing...My brother works for a large computer company testing networking equipment and things like that. It's very helpful to be able to send out a million packets a second with Perl and analyze what comes back--look at timings, look at errors, things like that."

"The advantages of testing with perl stem from the advantages of the language. For example, Perl is loosely-typed. So, even with the basic testing libraries, being able to say is the result of this action this, and not having to worry about types or other factors. It makes testing really readable, really logical and easy to interpret."

"Perl is a very appropriate language for doing extreme programming in. From the standpoint of testing or test-driven development, you want to verify the assumptions you're making in your head. Test-driven design enables you to sit down and write a test, and then write just enough code to make that test pass."

Links for this conversation's topic:

• The book on O'Reilly, and Ian and Chromatic's author pages
• Perl.com
• A list of Perl modules in the Test namespace
• An article: Testing Files and Test Modules
• An interview with Ian
• Ian's homepage
• Chromatic's homepage