Performance testing of Mainframe applications

kiran rangarajan · New User Joined: 17 Jan 2007 Posts: 2 Location: Pune

Hi,

I want to know how to do performance testing for mainframe applications, using Loadrunner? Have anybody done this before?

If any one has any document related to this, please share it with me.

Thanks
Kiran

DavidatK · Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 6:30 am

Kiran,

I?m not a real fan of performance modeling. I?ve done it with only marginal results at the IBM center. The problem is that the more known performance / resource data you give the model, the better it predicts, but obtaining the performance / resource information is not a trivial task. There are some tools that can help you capture some of the detail, but it never seems to be enough. And the scripts you use to drive the model are only as good as the script writer, and usually don?t accommodate exceptions.

Performance load testing is not an easy task under any condition. There are some models out there for various propose that are very good, but cost millions of dollars.

We?ve found that there are still many surprises even after modeling / load testing that I think don?t make it cost efficient.

Truly, I find the best indication for a load test is the old fashion way, brute force. Get as many people together and bang on the system at the same time.

kiran rangarajan · New User Joined: 17 Jan 2007 Posts: 2 Location: Pune

Hi Dave,

Thanks a lot for your reply. I will also try different methods now. I believe one of my colleague has done this before. I am not able to get in touch with that person. If i do get some material out from there, i will surely share it. I have to do this as it is a requirement. So i will try my best to get some thing working.

Thanks a lot Dave

DavidatK · Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 12:32 am

Hi Kiran,

Please do share your experiences with load testing, the effort required and the results as compred to after implementation

Sridevi Srirangan · New User Joined: 18 Oct 2007 Posts: 5 Location: India

Hi Kiran,

You can use RTE protocol in Load runner for connection. Record the scenario that u need to test. But don't use the mouse clicks while recording as it doesn't record them. But u need to have many mainframe ID's as much u intend to simulate. Rest of the steps are similar to non-mainframe procedures. u get the response time & other parameters from the SMF dump.

ganasrinivasan · New User Joined: 06 Nov 2006 Posts: 27 Location: Montreal

If it is the online mainframe application you can use hiperstation tool. Currently i am also doing the performance evaluation for my project.
we created (recorded) some scripts (transactions) and repaly them 100 to 500 times. Then we extracted the SMF records and compared the parameters.
One thing we have to keep in mind that we have to set the environment the same in case if you want to compare the performance after your code change.