mySAP Toolbag for Performance Tuning and Stress Testing

4.3. Developing Solid Real-World Success Criteria

With solution characteristics, goals, and stress-testing methods behind us, it is time to look at developing stress-test “success criteria”—the specific measurements and other decisive factors identified up front and then tracked to validate to what degree a particular testing and tuning effort has been successful. Chapter 6 discusses how this information will help us select and pilot what look to be the most appropriate test tools. But first, we must determine what the “measuring stick” looks like—the thing against which future measurements will be taken. In the world of testing, this is called a baseline.

Baselines come in two fundamental flavors, each of which maps back to how I defined “performance” ...