Load Testing is Not an Academic Problem
For Rowan University, ensuring that their students can get registered for classes is not an academic problem. If errors or system crashes prevent students from getting into the classes they need, it can have a serious impact on their academic careers, potentially even resulting in additional educational costs. So when the IT wizards at Rowan were planning significant upgrades to their hardware and the Banner 9 software from Ellucian to ensure the best possible experience for their students, they knew load testing was an essential part of the project.
When they came to us for load testing advice, they had two questions they needed to answer: First, how will the new system perform under the rush of activity when registration is first opened to their students? The system sees more traffic in the first 30 minutes than for the remaining week of open registration and that time can be crucial for students to get into the classes they really need. Second, they needed to be able to report to management the results of their infrastructure investment – specifically comparing how much response times had improved and how many failure conditions were eliminated.
“good news as the Junior Registration went perfectly without, I believe a single error….Sophomore registration went through yesterday flawlessly.” – Dan Destro, App DBA Manager
Testing the new system confirmed a much improved user experience and stability compared to their user experience estimates from previous registration events. After testing the old system for comparison, the results were impressive. The most important step in the process, adding an new course, was drastically faster on the new system:
The total throughput capacity of the new system is more than 400% of the old system:
Congrats to the team at Rowan University! Well done.
When his dad brought home a Commodore PET computer, Chris was drawn into computers. 7 years later, after finishing his degree in Computer and Electrical Engineering at Purdue University, he found himself writing software for industrial control systems. His first foray into testing software resulted in an innovative control system for testing lubricants in automotive engines. The Internet grabbed his attention and he became one of the first Sun Certified Java Developers. His focus then locked on performance testing of websites. As Chief Engineer for Web Performance since 2001, Chris now spends his time turning real-world testing challenges into new features for the Load Tester product.