In the realm of application performance, there are two major facets to consider – frontend performance testing and backend performance testing. As an application tester, understanding the differences between these two is integral in devising a robust testing strategy. This blog will provide an in-depth understanding of both frontend and backend performance testing, along with their respective pros and cons, and why both are required for a comprehensive understanding of your application’s performance.
Frontend Performance Testing: A Closer Look
Frontend testing primarily involves assessing the response of UI components. The metrics analyzed for frontend performance tests are typically quite different from what we use for backend testing.
Pros
Frontend performance testing offers a realistic measurement of your end users’ experiences. It encompasses everything from the time a user visits your webpage to the time they interact with something on the page. Additionally, about 80% of performance issues reported by end-users pertain to the frontend, so understanding frontend performance is critical for enhancing user experience.
Cons
The most significant drawback of frontend testing is that it does not examine what lies ‘under the hood’. This testing approach might not reveal certain backend issues that could be causing user problems. Also, frontend performance testing is generally more resource consuming as compared to protocol-based testing.
Backend Performance Testing: An Inside View
Backend performance testing targets the infrastructure behind the interfaces. This includes but is not restricted to databases, payment gateways, authentication services, and more.
Pros
Backend testing allows you to target different components of an application and is less resource-intensive than frontend testing. It can help identify tricky backend bottlenecks which can seriously impact performance at higher levels of user load.
Cons
Backend testing will not provide insights into the frontend performance and with microservices-based applications, backend testing can be expansive and complex due to the large number of components involved.
Marrying Frontend and Backend Testing for Holistic Results
The best strategy for thorough application testing includes both frontend and backend testing. They address different aspects of the performance and only together can they provide a comprehensive view.
The optimum mix of frontend and backend testing depends largely on your scale of operation. Nonetheless, for larger scale testing involving thousands of users, the recommended approach is to use backend performance testing scripts for generating most of the load while running some frontend performance testing scripts in the background.
The performance of both frontend and backend affects user perception of your application. Therefore, a combination of both testing types will give you the most accurate picture of your application’s performance.
Tags: #FrontendTesting, #BackendTesting, #ApplicationPerformance, #UserExperience
[Reference Link](!https://grafana.com/blog/2023/04/03/frontend-vs.-backend-how-to-plan-your-performance-testing-strategy/)