Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

February 2023

How to do exploratory testing for performance (k6 Office Hours #79)

Marie Cruz and Nicole van der Hoeven talk about what exploratory testing is, why you should do it, and how to do exploratory testing to improve application performance. They discuss some heuristics to add structure and intention to exploratory testing for both frontend and backend performance.

k6 browser module

As of k6 version 0.43.0, xk6-browser is now bundled in k6 as an experimental module! 🙌 Since announcing xk6-browser in November 2021 at Grafana ObservabilityCON, the team have been busy adding on new features to include browser automation in k6. The interest from the community has also increased, which shows that browser automation and frontend performance is as important as backend performance.

Efficiently Tracking Frontend Performance with xk6-browser and Slack Integration

In this article, we will discover the process of sending custom metrics, provided to us through the xk6-browser, in order to gain a better understanding of our performance tests. Through the integration of these metrics, we will be able to create more tailored Slack messages that will help to manage our rule sets.

Pair Grafana Faro and Grafana k6 for frontend observability

Grafana Faro and xk6-browser are both new tools within the Grafana Labs open source ecosystem, but the pairing is already showing a lot of potential in terms of frontend monitoring and performance testing. Faro, which was announced last November, includes a highly configurable SDK that instruments web apps to capture observability signals that can then be correlated with backend and infrastructure data.

All about Agile Performance (k6 Office Hours #78)

In this week's k6 Office Hours, join Developer Advocates Marie Cruz and Leandro Melendez as they talk about performance testing in the Agile world. How has Agile approach changed the way we do performance testing? What's the current state of performance testing? and How can k6 help? Join us to know more! Do you want to join our team?

Integrating k6 and Tracetest (k6 Office Hours #77)

Tracetest enables trace-based testing with assertions at any point within a request transaction. Using the xk6-tracetest extension, your k6 tests can launch deep testing by unlocking the power of OpenTelemetry. Join us as Developer Advocates Nicole and der Hoeven and Paul Balogh are joined by founder Ken Hamric and software engineer Oscar Reyes from Tracetest.

Frontend vs. backend performance testing

Which should you do: frontend vs. backend performance testing? The short answer is both. Each has its pros and cons, but hybrid load testing combines them and gives you the most holistic view of performance, including frontend concerns like how quickly a page renders or perceived application performance as well as backend concerns like response times of individual components.