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An approach to software performance testing is discussed. A case study describing the experience of using this approach for testing the performance of a system used as a gateway in a large industrial client/server transaction processing application is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the closely related issues of performance requirements and of testing. Brian Nixon's paper, "Managing Performance Requirements for Information Systems," describes a framework called Performance Requirements Framework (PeRF) for presenting and managing the performance requirements for information systems. Since information system have to maintain a persistent database and provide an interface with external users, with functional and nonfunctional requirements have to be considered. Functional requirements describe what an information system should do, whereas nonfunctional requirements consider software quality factors such as security and reliability. The paper proposes the treatment of performance requirements as non functional requirements and applies PeRF to manage the performance requirements of a University's student records system. Elaine Weyuker and Filippos Vokolos provide a healthy dose of practicality in "Experience With Performance Testing of Software System."