introduction

Advantages of LoadRunner

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Any performance testing tool (or for that matter any other automation tool) should be used on a case-to-case basis, depending upon the requirements, client budget etc. Since the topic of our blog is limited to LoadRunner, I would like to present some advantages and disadvantages of using LoadRunner.

Advantages:

  1. No need to install it on the server under test. It uses native monitors. For Ex: perfmon for windows or rstatd daemon for Unix
  2. Uses ANSI C as the default programming language1 and other languages like Java and VB.
  3. Excellent monitoring and analysis interface where you can see reports in easy to understand colored charts and graphics.
  4. Supports most of the protocols2.
  5. Makes correlation3 much easier. We will dig into correlation through a series of posts later.
  6. Nice GUI generated script through a one click recording, of course you would need to modify the script according to your needs.
  7. Excellent tutorials, exhaustive documentation and active tool support from HP.

Disadvantages:

The only disadvantage I can think is the prohibitive cost associated with the tool but that can also be compensated in the long run when you start getting a good ROI from the tool.

1Programming/Scripting language is used to represent the captured protocol data and manipulate the data for play-back.

2Protocol is simply a language that your client uses to communicate with the system.

3Correlation is a way to substitute values in dynamic data to enable successful playback.

Overall, I always believe that any Software testing tool is only as good as the automation tester using it.

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