patterns & practices: Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications

Glossary for Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications

• Latency Server latency is the time the server takes to complete the execution of a request. Server latency does not include network latency. Network latency is the additional time that it takes for a request and a response to cross a network. Client latency is the time that it takes for a request to reach a server and for the response to travel back.
• Metrics Metrics are the actual measurements obtained by running performance tests. These performance tests include system-related metrics such as CPU, memory, disk I/O, network I/O, and resource utilization levels. The performance tests also include application-specific metrics such as performance counters and timing data.
• Performance budgets Performance budgets are your constraints. Performance budgets specify the amount of resources that you can use for specific scenarios and operations and still be successful.