PeopleSoft Load Testing: How to Load Test PeopleSoft Applications

PeopleSoft Application Testing

There is not a ton of information out there about how to load test your PeopleSoft applications. This is surprising giving how important load testing is. If, for example, your human resources application does not process information correctly because it is unable to handle the amount of stress that it is under, this negatively affects your bottom line.

The last thing you want to do is find out about performance issues when your employees and customers need your PeopleSoft applications the most. Load testing allows you to prevent this from happening.

Your load testing needs to be capable of determining how well your applications hold up in a virtual environment. If you are taking advantage of the cloud and web-based capabilities of your PeopleSoft applications, you have no way of knowing about the stability of that platform until you perform load tests.


Here is how to set up and execute an effective load test on your PeopleSoft applications. These steps will minimize the amount of delay in launching your application and ensure that you get the best results possible.

Step 1: Identify your testing needs and limitations

Most enterprises are not clear about what exactly their load testing needs are. Because of this, they do not get the data that they need to get.

With load testing, you test for whether or not your applications perform properly when they are being used by many users simultaneously. You want to find out if your applications perform under the stress and, if not, what adjustments you need to make to ensure that they do. This means simulating different kinds of stress from the end users point of view.

You also need to consider how much time and resources you can reasonably commit to load testing. Given how important load testing is, you should be willing to commit enough resources to get the job done. As you will see, however, this does not mean that you have to spend an exorbitant amount money or time with your load testing.

Step 2: Select the right load tester

Selecting the right load tester will make or break your load testing operations. With PeopleSoft applications, you need to select a load tester that is capable of testing applications in a virtual environment. This means that the traditional protocol dependent load testers are out of the question.

The best load tester for PeopleSoft applications is AppLoader. AppLoader is protocol independent and fully capable of testing your PeopleSoft applications regardless of what environment they are in. You can fully customize AppLoader’s end-user parameters, which means you can simulate different users accessing your application from different browsers and connections.

AppLoader is affordable and runs its tests efficiently. While traditional load testers can take weeks or months to perform basic load tests, AppLoader can perform tests in days or, in some cases, hours. This means you can dedicate less money and time to testing and more of it into developing new applications and making existing ones better.

Step 3: Plan ahead

Once you have your load tester and are ready to begin load testing a new application, take some time and figure out some important things. Perhaps the most important thing to determine before testing is how much stress you should put on your application during the load test.

You should be able to get a pretty good estimate of the amount of stress your application will be under by looking at similar applications that are already functioning. For example, if you are going to load test a customer service PeopleSoft application, take a look at your current demand for customer service.

It is a good idea to think about situations in which your application will be under more stress than normal. If you test for those situations, you can develop even more confidence in your application’s ability to perform.

Step 4: Set the parameters

The nice thing about AppLoader is that it is easy to use. While other load testers require you to do complex coding when setting up each load test, AppLoader simply requires you to tell it what application to test and under what levels of stress to test it under.

All you need to do is figure out the parameters and collect the data.

Step 5: Run as many tests as it takes

It is a good idea to run multiple load tests on each application. AppLoader’s speed and ease-of-use makes this easy. Within days you can have a complete set of data which tells you how well your application will perform under both normal levels of stress and higher than expected levels of stress.

AppLoader presents this data in easy to understand charts and graphs. If you take advantage of PeopleSoft’s virtualization capabilities, having this data on hands gives you some badly needed certainty about your application’s performance.

If you follow the steps, you will be able to properly test your PeopleSoft applications. This will help you avoid those disastrous situations where your applications do not perform the way they are supposed to. Your team members will be happy, your customers will be happy, and your bottom line will be happy that you did

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