From time to time I see questions on different forums asking what skills are necessary for performance testers. There were pretty interesting discussions. Looks like most experts agree that performance testing requires more skills than just knowledge about how to create a script for a particular load testing tool. While it is still possible to imagine a performance tester in a large corporation with deep specialization who only creates scripts and mechanically runs them while other performance experts monitor the system and analyze results, I don't see many perspectives neither for this person, nor for the approach. Systems become so complicated now that the sum of specialized expert views doesn't give the whole performance picture.

This year performance (load, stress) testing will be a focus track at the CMG 2007 conference. It is the best conference, by my opinion, about performance-related topics. Below is the official text:

The Computer Measurement Group (CMG) calls for papers and presentations for the 33rd International Conference to be held in San Diego, California, December 2nd through 7th, 2007. The 2007 CMG conference will cover load and stress testing, benchmarking, performance optimization, software performance engineering, resource management, capacity analysis, simulation and analytic modeling, and cost management with special emphasis on Virtualization, System Oriented Architecture (SOA), IT Service Management and IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), and the technology implications of globalization.

I've been working on a Webinar and article about testing SOA... because I've been asked to... because SOA is all the rage or something. So what's the big deal?!? Objects that are based on a business process is called a Service... Ok. There are competing "standards" for communication protocols for services... Ok. There are SOA Management Software packages that do what middleware has always done... Ok. Services are assumed to be remote and developed by someone else... Ok. And?