Load Testing result description

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Definition of terms used.

Hi, I am just trying to confirm my understanding of the terms used in the SOATest Load Test Report.

1. Response Receive Time : is the time taken between sending a request to a destination and the reception of a response from that destination.

2. Server Time : is the time taken by SOATest to prepare and send a request, receive the response and compile statistics.

3. Total Execution Time : is the time taken by SOATest to complete a request. Therefore, it is the sum of Response Receive Time and Server Time (items 1 and 2 above).

Could you please confirm this.

Thank you.
savarig01

LegacyForum

Hi savarig01,


I apologize if this took a bit longer than you had hoped, but I wanted to be sure that I was giving you the most complete and accurate answers available.


1. Response Receive Time
This is essentially the time that it takes to get from the beginning of the response to the end of the response. For example, an analogy might be the time that it takes to read a letter from beginning to end.

With that in mind, Response Receive Time is calculated as the difference between the time that last byte of the response is received and the time that the first byte of the response is received. It is essentially a time-measure of the size of the response. If this number is particularly large, then it might be an indication that the response sent by the service is overly complex and could be trimmed down.


2. Server Time
This is basically the time that SOAtest spends waiting for a response. The entire request was already sent, and now there's nothing to do but sit and wait.

Server Time is calculated as the time between when SOAtest sends the last byte of the request data and receives the first byte of the response data. A large value here could indicate that the channel is particularly slow or that the server is taking a very long time to process requests and send responses.


3. Total Execution Time
One can think of this as the time that the user perceives. As such, the Total Execution Time will be the sum of the Request Send Time, the Server Time, and the Response Receive Time.

Total Execution Time is the time measured from the first byte of the request to the last byte of the response.



So, if I am sitting at my computer, and I click a button that generates a request to your service, then how long am I waiting for these various externalities to complete before I have the data that I want? For me, the speed of my equipment is a constant, so I experience differences in wait time as a reflection upon the services that I am accessing. This is how to interpret the data that SOAtest produces.


Please note that none of these measures includes the time to "prepare" a request, where by "prepare" I am assuming that you mean "generating the XML based upon values entered in Form Input and/or parameterized from a Datasource." Instead, these metrics are meant to provide information about the performance of the service, and SOAtest reports the experience as a client would experience it.


I hope that this information will be helpful to you and our other forum users. Thanks to your question, a feature request has been added to include documentation about these and other metrics.


Sincerely,
Jason