Scripting is a critical part of performance testing and is the actual activity that validates and creates the results of the test. Although different testing software uses different scripting languages and processes, the core concepts for scripting are the same.

Below are the most important parts of the scripting process to ensure that your performance tests are working:

Record & Playback

Most performance testing tools, like JMeter, provide you with the ability to record a script and then playing back the same (after making any required changes to the script) test. The business flow is manually recorded and changes to the script are handled efficiently.

Modular scripting

Adopt Modular scripting if the performance testing team prefers to create regression suite or a performance testing framework. Individual workflows, recorded separately in such scenarios and each workflow, becomes a part of an action.

Transaction naming

You can carry out transaction naming while recording the script or while updating the scripts. Add both transaction starts, and end points to the script, as these are essential to getting the response time for a page.

ThinkTime & Pacing Time

ThinkTime is the time that a virtual user waits on a page (and thinks) before moving to the next page. Pacing time is the time lag between two consecutive sessions for a virtual user.

Text / Image check point

Add Text checkpoints for each page, and select the text that needs checking so that that text is unique for that page. Auto recording of text check points is also possible and change them in settings should the need updating.

Data management

In order to make the test scenario closer to production scenarios, add data files to scripts at where data needs to be input by the end user. For the purpose of our testing, Data files, as well as date and time functions are essential.

Dynamic content management

While recording the script, generate items like session IDs, timestamp values, etc. Replaying these values may cause the script replay to fail. This is due to the fact that for every session the server may demand a different session ID for that specific session. In such cases co-relation functions are useful. In the case of JMeter, regular expressions can help manage the dynamic data points.

Replay for one user

Replay the script after making the above updates. Validate whether the script is functioning as it should. If so, move on to muliple user testing.

Replay with multiple users

Once the script runs well with one user, execute it and run the scenarios again with multiple users (small number of users ex. 5 users).

Test

If the test succeeds with 5 users it is then subjected to the full length test as planned, monitoring servers fully while testing.

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