Performance Tests Redux

A few weeks ago, "Lies, Damned Lies and Performance Tests," gave us a great example of how even a good performance test can be ruined through a few (seemingly) small mistakes. Today, let's revisit performance tests with an example of performance tests that I constructed on behalf of a client, as an example of how to do them correctly. Even good performance tests suffer from a paradox. On the one hand, you really want to understand how the product will perform in the real world, with all of its environmental conditions.