As trading has become electronic, trading applications need to be reliable and effective; emphasizing more on the speed of delivery with peaks and troughs in demand. And the answer to these demands is Performance Testing, a beneficial testing strategy in terms of cost -the cost of fixing a performance defect flaw is many times more compared to fixing a functional defect which could just involve rewriting a few lines of logic code .
AppLabs, with its wide spread experience in this arena, has conceptualized certain strategies to help clients in addressing all the risks related to performance testing of trading applications. This successful test strategy hinges on the following aspects:

- Fit for purpose
- Ability to address all the pain points

AppLabs has implemented TRADES Heuristic Model to help strategize performance testing for trading applications. This model promotes a structured thought process whilst taking into account critical drivers; business needs , performance objectives , risk and budgets available , thereby helping to choose the right test types and techniques to be employed.

A careful analysis of the technology and application stack that is within its control can help identify the performance bottlenecks and come up with recommendations for right infrastructure, configuration and tuning. Challenges in building a real time performance test environment may be overcome through emulators and simulators. Additional probes may need to be written to augment the performance metrics capture capability of Commercial Off The Shelf COTS performance testing tools. Only competent performance test analysts can draw inferences from the performance test results and come up with recommendations to meet the performance objectives.

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