I was a happy functional tester who used to create and run automation scripts, collect the logs, analyse it and report the results. And then came the shift in career. I was posted as a performance tester in a reputed MNC.
Initial months were horrible, those were the times when my patience got tested heavily. Yes! performance testers needs to have more patience and focus. Let me tell you what difference I felt due to this shift in job profile.
As a functional tester in telecom domain, I used to write and run, for instance, a script that simulates direct dial voice call. And the SUT will write the logs of that single call. Moreover, my TTCN simulator also would write its own logs and report the mismatches in message flows. So, my focus would be on message flows and various parameters of each message. I was able to run quite a few test cases in a good day.
Now, here comes a typical week as a performance tester. I need to setup at-least 90 TTCN simulators with similar call flows. And I need to focus on how to make the system bleed due to load. Call flows and message parameters are no more concern now. They were certified by functional testers that those are fine. So, a full day gets consumed by environment setup (if something goes wrong then two days). And if something went wrong in the setup, I used to turn towards the system logs. It will slap me with a blob of details. Yes! the log will contain details of lakhs of calls. Then, it will easily take at-least an hour to analyse the log.
Here is where my learning starts again. Now, I see the "grep" tool of Linux as my saviour. My learnings may be small, but it shows how ignorant I was previously. For instance, we know the following command,
# grep "pattern" *
file1: pattern match
file2: pattern match
You may want to use AWK again to filter the column level details. Here the filenames that are printed in each pattern match may be an overhead for you. So, you may use,
# grep -h "pattern" *
pattern match
pattern match
Anyone can find this (https://www.gnu.org/software/grep/manual/grep.html) URL and gain more knowledge. However it will be complete when it is used in a context. So, I have started this blog to share my learnings (even if it is small or big or tiny) and experiences as a Software Professional. And please share yours too!! I would be grateful for that!
Initial months were horrible, those were the times when my patience got tested heavily. Yes! performance testers needs to have more patience and focus. Let me tell you what difference I felt due to this shift in job profile.
As a functional tester in telecom domain, I used to write and run, for instance, a script that simulates direct dial voice call. And the SUT will write the logs of that single call. Moreover, my TTCN simulator also would write its own logs and report the mismatches in message flows. So, my focus would be on message flows and various parameters of each message. I was able to run quite a few test cases in a good day.
Now, here comes a typical week as a performance tester. I need to setup at-least 90 TTCN simulators with similar call flows. And I need to focus on how to make the system bleed due to load. Call flows and message parameters are no more concern now. They were certified by functional testers that those are fine. So, a full day gets consumed by environment setup (if something goes wrong then two days). And if something went wrong in the setup, I used to turn towards the system logs. It will slap me with a blob of details. Yes! the log will contain details of lakhs of calls. Then, it will easily take at-least an hour to analyse the log.
Here is where my learning starts again. Now, I see the "grep" tool of Linux as my saviour. My learnings may be small, but it shows how ignorant I was previously. For instance, we know the following command,
# grep "pattern" *
file1: pattern match
file2: pattern match
You may want to use AWK again to filter the column level details. Here the filenames that are printed in each pattern match may be an overhead for you. So, you may use,
# grep -h "pattern" *
pattern match
pattern match
Anyone can find this (https://www.gnu.org/software/grep/manual/grep.html) URL and gain more knowledge. However it will be complete when it is used in a context. So, I have started this blog to share my learnings (even if it is small or big or tiny) and experiences as a Software Professional. And please share yours too!! I would be grateful for that!
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