Using a load test environment
Load testing is most often done right at the end of the development cycle as part of acceptance testing. The idea is to subject the new website with the same load it can expect in production. While this is better than nothing, it is not the most efficient way of ensuring that your website will perform well:
Leaving load testing to the end makes it more likely that the test will unearth problems, making it less likely that you’ll meet your release deadline
It is hard to find the cause of any problems, because you’re effectively testing all components of the site in one go
This section shows a more efficient way of ensuring that your website will perform well.
Load testing individual components during development
Just as you do component testing during development to make sure each component is bug-free, it makes sense to load test individual components. For example, you would load test your data access layer, using test stubs for the other layers.
Focusing on one...
