{"id":1655,"date":"2015-06-04T16:38:32","date_gmt":"2015-06-04T16:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.abstracta.us\/?p=1655"},"modified":"2025-05-05T21:21:42","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T21:21:42","slug":"is-the-system-actually-running-slow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abstracta.us\/blog\/performance-testing\/is-the-system-actually-running-slow\/","title":{"rendered":"Is The System Actually Running Slow?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- Go to www.addthis.com\/dashboard to customize your tools --><script src=\"\/\/s7.addthis.com\/js\/300\/addthis_widget.js#pubid=ra-58d80a50fc4f926d\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h1><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #333333;\">When a user says that &#8220;<strong>the system is slow<\/strong>&#8221; we would like to know: Is the system actually running slow or is it a matter of perception?<\/span><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #333333;\">Is the chronometer distorted or does the system, in fact, prevent the user from working in a normal way?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #333333;\">Nothing beats numbers when we\u2019re in search of conclusions about the system\u2019s true behavior. Something that proves quite useful in revealing the response time of web applications is to enable what is known as &#8220;<strong>time taken.<\/strong>&#8221; It&#8217;s used not only for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.abstracta.us\/types-of-performance-tests\/\">performance tests<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #333333;\">\u00a0but also, and mainly, for systems in production.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #333333;\">Basically, we indicate what it is that we want to be recorded on the access_log. What is usually recorded here is the moment at which a resource was accessed. We have the option to request that the information of the &#8220;user-agent&#8221; be saved (to know from what browser, or even from what device, the access occurred), in addition to the size of the resource sent, the http response code (200 indicating OK, 4XX indicating error on the client side, 5XX indicating error on the server side, and 3XX indicating, in general, a redirection), as well as the time elapsed from the receipt of the request\u00a0to the return of a response.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #333333;\">This is something quite simple to configure. For example, in Tomcat, we must modify the &#8220;server.xml&#8221; by including, in the end, the following information:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #333333;\"><code>&lt;Valve className=\"org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve\" directory=\"logs\"<br \/>\nprefix=\"access_log.\" suffix=\".txt\"<br \/>\npattern=\"%h %l %u %t &amp;quot;%r&amp;quot; %s %b &amp;quot;%{Referer}i&amp;quot; &amp;quot;%{User-Agent}i&amp;quot; %D\" \/&gt;<br \/>\n<\/code><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #333333;\">The part where we indicate what should be saved is the one defined in &#8220;pattern.&#8221; To know the meaning of each parameter, there is a reference <a href=\"https:\/\/tomcat.apache.org\/tomcat-7.0-doc\/api\/org\/apache\/catalina\/valves\/AccessLogValve.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>, but,\u00a0in advance, you should know that the %D (or %T) is what we have to add for the response time, or time taken, to be saved.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #333333;\">After we have an access log with all this information, we can use one of the many tools available for viewing. There are two alternatives to mention, one is commercial (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.apacheviewer.com\/?utm_source=abstractaus&amp;utm_campaign=blog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Apache Log Viewer<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #333333;\">) and the other is open source (<a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/abstracta\/AccessLogAnalyzer\">AccessLog Viewer<\/a> by<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #333333;\">\u00a0Abstracta).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #333333;\">If we get these accurate measures of each request, we can be sure about the time taken by the server. If those values differ greatly from the user perception, we still need to avoid possible subjectivities in the response times reported by users, so, we can do that by measuring the\u00a0time taken in the browser (with tools like Fiddler or PageSpeed) and comparing results.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2><strong>Recommended for You<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/abstracta.us\/blog\/performance-testing\/optimize-e-commerce-website-performance-black-friday\/\">How to Optimize E-commerce Website Performance for Black Friday<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/abstracta.us\/blog\/performance-testing\/execute-performance-test-fewer-problems\/\">How to Execute Performance Tests with Fewer Problems<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When a user says that &#8220;the system is slow&#8221; we would like to know: Is the system actually running slow or is it a matter of perception? Is the chronometer distorted or does the system, in fact, prevent the user from working in a normal&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v14.0.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Is The System Actually Running Slow? | Abstracta<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Is the system actually running slow? How can we know if it&#039;s not a matter of perception? 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