Now that a lot of software applications are directly visible from customers and that a failure has broader consequences, load testing has gained an increase importance in the software testing domain. In this Phd thesis, Zhen Ming Jiang propose an approache for the automated and systematic analysis of load testing logs.
For those who fears that the content might be too much theoretical, many of the techniques in this thesis were developed to address the daily challenges faced by software testers at Research In Motion (RIM). Load testing execution logs are hard to parse and analyze automatically due to their free-form structure. The thesis proposes a log abstraction approach that uncovers the internal structure of each log line. Then it presents automated approaches to assess the quality of a system under load by deriving various models (functional, performance and reliability models) from the large set of execution logs.
Read the complete thesis on http://qspace.library.queensu.ca/bitstream/1974/7775/1/Jiang_ZhenMing_201301_PhD.pdf