Performance Measurement points


This page explains the purpose of identifying measurement points and and some examples of measurement points.

Performance Measurement points identify the origins of collected performance measurement data.

Performance Measurement point information is important to understand the behaviour of an application.

Performance measurement points shall not be mixed with performance characteristics.

  • Performance measurement points identify where a system behaviour has been observed.

  • Performance characteristics identify what type of system behaviour has been observed.

There are two types of measurement points:

  1. External.

  2. Internal.


External Performance Measurement Points

External Performance Measurement Points identify different types of measured elements in a Traffic Stream.

There are external performance measurement points at three levels of a Traffic Stream:


At top level of a Traffic Stream

Performance Measurement Points at top level of a Traffic Stream identify global or aggregated elements, such as:

  • Requested transaction rate.

  • Actual transaction rate.

  • Transaction rate deviation.


At service level of a a Traffic Stream

Performance Measurement Points at service level of a Traffic Stream identify application message elements in a Traffic Stream that are measured.

There can be one performance measurement point for each:

  • Outgoing service request message type (and related application protocol method).

  • Incoming service request message type (and related application protocol method).

  • Incoming response message message types in response to an outgoing service request message type.

  • Outgoing response message type in response to an incoming service request message type.


At interface level of a a Traffic Stream

Performance Measurement Points at interface level of a Traffic Stream identify types of transmission events of interest.

There can be performance measurement points at the interface level for:

  • Connection failures.

  • Disconnects during read or write.

  • Transaction time-outs.

  • Transaction failures.

  • Transaction passed.

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Internal Performance Measurement Points

Internal Performance Measurement Points identify different types of measured elements on the SUT (System Under Test)).

Internal performance measurement points can be different hardware and software resources.

Internal Performance measurement point information is important to locate application bottlenecks, code bugs, configuration problems, and other system characteristics limiting an application.

Types of Internal Measurement Points

There are two types of measurement points of special importance:

  • Measurement points for resources. Measured resources can be CPU usage, memory usage, bandwidth usage of busses or transmission links, disk I/O rates, etc.

  • Measurement points for access to resources. Access to resources are different types of queues.

Locations of Internal Performance Measurement Points

Internal performance measurement points can be found at three levels:

  • System level (global level of a server).

  • Process level (a single process, or a group of processes executing the same binary code).

  • Inside application processes (usually application queues).

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