by Rachel Fraser
One of the long-term impacts of 2020 may be to transform the way organizations look at remote working and collaboration. The way businesses have embraced the work from home culture has proved that work is something you do, not somewhere you go. At the same time, consumers have made a significant shift towards digital communication and commerce, significantly increasing the demands placed upon such diverse systems as social media platforms, video conferencing apps and eCommerce solutions.
This fundamental change in the way we interact with business-critical systems has placed an unprecedented burden on applications and infrastructure alike. IT and business managers are tasked with ensuring business continuity and operational efficiency, placing an emphasis on systems performance and availability. One of the ways stakeholders can help mitigate the risk of functional or performance failures is to ensure a robust testing regime is in place.
Staying on top of code changes
With the introduction of Oracle’s continuous delivery model, businesses are changing the relationship they have with testing. Smaller, more frequent code-current events have replaced the large, infrequent upgrade projects of the past. The automation of testing allows organizations to be more responsive to code changes, accelerating the process of onboarding new features and functionality.
Functional testing is a mandatory requirement during any enterprise software upgrade or update. After all, you need to know how a system is going to perform following any code changes. However, during busy periods, systems do not always perform as expected, so performance or load testing should also form a part of the testing process.
Many organizations will have experienced unprecedented demand on their systems in recent months. A sudden increase in workloads can have a downstream impact on systems performance, resulting in a poor user experience or, in a worst-case scenario, systems failure. Nobody wants to be the subject of a headline describing supply chain problems, systems crashes, or customer service nightmares.
Taking the stress out of stress testing
Just to be clear, running a sequence of functional tests (EG. input X equals output Y), will not reflect the real-world demands (load) that will be placed on your systems at any given time. Following any functional or environmental change, load testing should be included as part of a programmatic, process-driven testing regime. So how can you set up these tests without adding significant cost and complexity?
Dimension LoadTest can be used throughout your software development lifecycle and is particularly powerful when applications are being updated, extended or enhanced.
Using a very small footprint, it can be installed in minutes and can simulate a large number of virtual users, with varying profiles at any given time. It supports cloud-based workloads wherever you need, with easy-to-use ‘no-code’ script functionality. Repeatable and predictable, you can rely on LoadTest’s actionable results on simulated load.
Recently we attended the JD Edwards INFOCUS 2020 virtual conference. It was extremely heartening to see that, even though virtual, the level of attendance and engagement within the JDE community was still high.
If you want to see our presentation, Test to relieve stress! Why JDE E1 load/volume/performance test?, click the link here: https://www.accelevents.com/e/JDEdwardsINFOCUS/portal
Did you miss the event? Quest User Group has posted slides and recordings on their website. Quest members can view now at https://questoraclecommunity.org/learn?q=INFOCUS
