Mobile App Europe 2014 Notes

Mobile Apps and the Role of Load Testing

Notes on a session by Peter Varhol (Aras Corporation) at the Mobile App Europe 2014.

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##Why Load Test Mobile Apps?

• Load testing the backend infrastructure (the app itself has just a single user)
• Can the server handle the expected number of users?

##Expections

• Performane/response time time
• Expected number of users is a serviced with acceptable performance
• The application stresses approximately evenly across tiers and components
• The application fails gracefully
• App and backend infrastructure serves a variety of business cases (normal use, seasonal high use, new product or marketing initiatives)

##Business Issues in Mobile Load Testing

• The market moves too fast
• We don’t know how the app is going to be used
• If a public app, we don’t know how many people will use it

=> So we have to make some market and use assumptions

##Technical Issues in Mobile Load Testing

• The devices are all different

##Ways to Load Test Mobile Apps

• Synthetic test scripts
• RUM - Real User Monitoring
• Crowdsouring
• Recorded user sessions

##Expected Results of Load Testing

• Can the server handle the expected number of users?
• What does the response curve look like as uses are added?
• At what point does the application fail?
• Where is the application stressed?

##Preparing to Load Test

• Develop user personas
• Determine device characteristics
• Derive activities from personas

##Developing Personas

• Power/Standard/Casual
• Domestic/International users
• By age
• What ever makes sense for the application

##For each persona determine

• Frequency of visits
• Actions on each visit

##Making Use of the User Persona

• What percentage of each
• Have to guess
• Try different balanaces
• Compare response time and load measures

##SLA

• E.g. “in 98% of the time we react within 500ms”

##Corrective Actions

• More Servers
• Hardware accelarator (Caching)
• Bugs
• Too much traffic (data not needed)

Showed JMeter

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