You can create various load testing scenarios for your web application through the Load Strategies provided by the AppPerfect Load Test. Load Strategies can be accessed from Project Properties dialog (Project -> Properties Editor...) in Load Test perspective.
There are six load strategies you can choose from. These are selected at the time of setting up the project. You can see graphical and detailed information about them at the Project Properties dialog box.
With a combination of Run Duration and Load Strategy, you can create various scenarios for testing the load that your web/database application can bear. You can also use load strategies to indicate the breaking point of your applications.
The first two strategies: Burst and Loop work with a constant number of virtual users. The other three strategies are all a variation of the Incremental strategy where the user count increases.
Enter a fixed number of virtual users that will be used to simulate load on your application in bursts of traffic. You can specify the duration in time or number of hits. It's best to use time as the run duration for this strategy though because number of hits may limit the burst-effect for this strategy.
Setup: The number of users remains constant. Users will perform the recorded tasks simultaneously at random intervals of time.
Select the fixed number of users that you want should access your website/application and perform the tasks that you have recorded. This will be repeated 'n' number of times where 'n' is the number of loops you provide. This strategy will help you identify consistency in your web/database application's behavior.
Setup: The number of users remains constant. The loop count has to be provided. Please note that this strategy does not follow Run Duration in time. The project runs till the loop count.
Incremental strategy provides a controlled increase in the load to your web application.
Setup: You have to provide an initial user value, an increment by user value, an increment by time value and the maximum number of users that should access your web/database application.
Exponential strategy is similar to incremental strategy except for the speed with which the user load increases. Exponential strategy will show your web/database application's breaking point faster than Incremental strategy.
Setup: All settings are same as incremental strategy, only you don't have to provide an increment by value as the user load doubles every increment by time period.
Under this strategy, you will get a very realistic load test for your web/database application. It works like Incremental strategy for increasing the load, but like it is most likely to happen in the real world, the load is taken off from the web application. You will be able to see if your application recovers well from peak traffic.
Setup: All the same settings are required as for Incremental Strategy.
Select Cyclic strategy when you want to test your application with cyclic load on it during the test.
Setup: You need to specify the initial Virtual User Count value, an Increment By value, a Interval value (seconds) and a Maximum Virtual Users value. The Virtual User Count is the number of threads that will be created when the test is run In this type of a run, the number of threads specified as the Virtual count value are started and after the specified interval, the number of threads are increased by the value specified for Increment By. Once number of virtual users reach maximum virtual users value then application will start stopping virtual users till it again reaches to initial virtual user Value. From this point onwards once again it will increasing load, this way will test your application with cycles of increasing and decreasing loads.