As we know, reliability and performance are paramount in software testing. It’s pointless “testing” a piece of software where key incidents and issues aren’t identified.That’s where synthetic testing comes into play – a proactive means of ensuring consistent quality assurance. Synthetic testing allows developers and QA teams to detect performance issues beforehand by replicating user actions and system behaviours in a synthetic or controlled environment, without actually releasing the app into the wild or paying for human testing. Synthetic testing can predict issues in advance by simulating the activity of normal users, network conditions and system failures.
Now, with these considerations, let’s look in-depth at the key components of synthetic testing and how it complements real user monitoring in building a sound, end-to-end performance management strategy.
Table of Contents
Key components of synthetic testing
Synthetic testing is based on two key components: simulated user interactions and proactive monitoring.
Simulated user interactions
- Creating test scenarios: Simulating the action of users by artificially creating traffic that an application can respond to. This can be any conceivable user interaction – maybe loading a page, simulating a request out to an external API or performing a database search triggered by some user interaction. For example, a synthetic test of the login page might show you how fast the login page loads and processes “user” input in the way of an email and password to show you how long the page takes to load, how long the database query that validates the login credentials takes, how long the response takes to be sent to the user, etc. And all of this is done without having a user actually log into the application – so if something doesn’t work as expected, it can be easily resolved prior to launch.
- End-to-end application monitoring: Test scenarios deal with isolated actions – for example, someone adding to cart, someone going to the checkout, etc. But users don’t interact with apps and websites this way – they experience a series of individual events chained together – an end-to-end experience. End to end application monitoring allows you to test this full user experience, so you know each individual part of the user’s journey not only works well in isolation, but also in the context of other common actions the user might take. For example – rather than just testing the checkout, synthetic testing will allow you to perform a full test of someone logging in, adding a product to cart, checking out, checking their order status and then provide you with a report identifying issues for your developers to resolve.
Proactive monitoring and issue detection
- 24/7 monitoring: Synthetic tests run continuously, or on periodic intervals, offering round-the-clock monitoring of system performance. This helps teams with constant vigilance to find issues before they affect real users. For example, if an important API slows down during off-peak hours, synthetic testing flags it immediately for investigation and you can react accordingly. You would likely never have known about this otherwise unless users started leaving bad reviews about your app saying how slowly it performs.
- Geolocation testing: Synthetic testing helps to maintain performance consistency around the globe by simulating user interactions that originate from different geographical locations. This is extremely important for applications with a global user base because if you don’t perform synthetic testing, you are assuming that all users access your app at the same speed and functionality level without any bias – which is obviously never the case. Synthetic testing allows you to simulate a 3G connection from South Africa as easily as you can simulate a 5G connection from Japan, or a broadband connection from San Francisco, or any other combination that might be relevant.
Types of synthetic testing
There are various types of synthetic testing designed to target different aspects of performance and reliability related to applications. Each of them has a particular role to play in ensuring that the software applications work seamlessly in different conditions.
API testing
- Simulating API requests: This type of synthetic testing involves testing the performance and reliability of third party APIs by simulating requests to them. This allows you to test whether these APIs behave as they should under various conditions through response times, error rates and throughput. This is quite important for those applications that heavily rely on microservices; identifying communication issues between these services helps prevent service issues or disruptions in app functionality.
- Importance in microservices architectures: On a microservices architecture, APIs are the backbone of communication between services. Synthetic API testing will guarantee that such interactions are smooth and error-free, preventing problems such as slow response times or mismatched data in displays that can deteriorate the user experience.
Web application testing
- Synthetic browser tests: This mimics the interactions of a user within a web application – consider page interactions such as checkout, cart and add to basket. Synthetic testing will allow you to simulate these actions, offering you a huge amount of insight into how your application actually performs in varying conditions.
- Multi-browser and device testing: Synthetic tests can be configured to run on different browsers and devices, ensuring cross-platform compatibility. This is particularly important for applications accessed through various devices and browsers, helping identify and resolve compatibility issues that could hinder the user experience.
Performance testing
- Stress testing: Stress tests can simulate a high volume of users or spikes in traffic – giving you an idea of how your system will perform when it is at maximum demand. This will help identify how well an application handles a high load and its breaking points, ensuring that the application stays stable and responsive during spikes in real traffic.
- Response time monitoring: This type of synthetic testing measures how well and how fast the system responds to various users’ activities. In so doing, this allows teams to analyse response times under particular conditions to locate slowdowns and make the appropriate optimisation for speed and reliability for user interaction during high traffic periods.
Why should you run synthetic tests?
Early detection of issues
Because synthetic testing is proactive, it can help you find performance problems, things that are broken or even things that might cause future downtime or outages before those problems actually impact the users. For example, should an important API slow down or break down completely, synthetic testing can detect this instantly and allow developers to fix the problem before it reaches the end user.
Also, with regular synthetic testing, you can establish performance benchmarks. Watching these patterns over time allows you to identify the early warning signs of potential performance issues. These can the be addressed before these issues snowball into something more serious – and it’s orders of magnitude cheaper to fix an issue early than it is to roll out a fix after launch because it wasn’t spotted.
Uniform user experience regardless of geography
Another advantage of synthetic testing is that it ensures a site or an application can perform uniformly across different countries. This is because synthetic monitoring, simulating the interactions from different parts of the world, can help you identify performance issues specific to certain parts of the world and address them before launch; you don’t have to wait until a user in Australia leaves a bad review because the speed at which they can access the app is double that of what a user in the USA can, for example. This is very important for applications serving a diverse, international user base, as it ensures that users in different regions experience the same level of speed and functionality.
In addition, synthetic testing increases service availability through constant monitoring. This prevents larger-scale disruptions because the detection of outages or other malfunctions happens so quickly. If an application goes down during off-peak hours, synthetic tests immediately send a notice to a developer who can then respond quickly. In turn, this improves service availability in general – for example if your development team is in the UK but your primary user base is in the US and you don’t have this kind of testing and monitoring in place, you might find your app goes down when your UK developers have gone to sleep, and your US user base is trying to use the app at their peak hours and there’s nobody around to check whether the app is still working. A synthetic testing and monitoring service will allow you to respond quickly and minimise any downtime.
Synthetic Testing vs. Real User Monitoring
While synthetic testing and real user monitoring (RUM) both play critical roles in maintaining application performance, they serve distinct purposes and complement each other in a comprehensive monitoring strategy.
Synthetic Testing
- Controlled, Predefined Tests: Synthetic testing is the running of predefined scenarios -meaning that you have total control over what is being tested. This level of control enables you to anticipate specific outcomes and check that key aspects of the application are performing optimally – including critical user journey paths.
- Proactive: Synthetic testing is proactive because it’s all about determining whether your website is going to have problems before real users are impacted – i.e. anticipating the problems before they actually happen. Synthetic testing tools can run tests continuously or at intervals, even during times of low loads. Think of synthetic testing as having a robot go through the motions of a checkout process in order to find problems in the transaction flow long before real customers do.
Real User Monitoring (RUM)
- Real-Time User Data: RUM focuses on what real users are actually experiencing with an application. It shows precisely how users navigate and where they encounter problems in real time by capturing live data about both performance and usability. Real user monitoring is important because while you may think you can anticipate the journeys users might take and test for them, the reality is that users are going to do strange things that you may not have ever considered or tested for. Real user monitoring will allow you to identify these user paths and address any issues that otherwise would likely have gone unnoticed.
Complementary Use
Performing both synthetic testing and RUM together offers a comprehensive approach to testing application performance. Synthetic testing provides a proactive layer wherein one detects and resolves issues before they affect the users. RUM adds this layer of reactiveness, thus providing real data about behaviour that applications take when they are under live conditions. They guarantee a strong monitoring strategy that can predict efficiency in resolving performance issues.
Implementing Synthetic Testing with T-Plan
T-Plan provides a powerful synthetic testing platform wherein teams can simulate a wide range of user interactions and behaviours.
Comprehensive Test Automation: T-Plan’s automation platform enables the creation and execution of synthetic tests that mimic diverse user interactions. It helps identify performance bottlenecks by simulating actions like logging in, navigating applications, and completing transactions. With T-Plan, teams can build repeatable test scenarios that closely resemble real-world usage patterns.
Cross-Platform Support: T-Plan supports testing across multiple platforms, browsers and devices to ensure a consistent user experience. Cross-platform compatibility issues will be easily identifiable early by teams by testing applications across multiple environments.
Integration with CI/CD Pipelines: Seamless integration with CI/CD pipelines enables T-Plan to perform synthetic tests automatically at every build or deployment. This makes sure that new code changes are thoroughly tested for their performance and thus provides immediate feedback, reducing the risk of performance issues in production.
With T-Plan, you can implement synthetic testing strategies that ensure application performance and reliability throughout the development lifecycle.
Challenges in synthetic testing and how to overcome them
While there are many advantages to synthetic testing, there are also some complications that are worth considering.
Maintaining test accuracy
Synthetic tests may not always cover the full range of how a real user might interact with your app or website. Issues may not be as accurately detected, as predefined scenarios can miss certain edge cases or the sometimes strange behaviour of real users.
Solution: Regularly update synthetic test scenarios to reflect patterns of user behaviour. You should also be performing real user monitoring to try to account for these edge cases and build them into your testing.
Managing false positives
Synthetic testing can produce false positives, flagging issues that do not impact real users or even in some cases issues that aren’t actually there; if your test results are frequently inconclusive, this is known as “flaky testing” and can be a really frustrating experience for developers and QA teams. This can result in unnecessary alerts and lead you to spend time addressing issues that don’t really exist.
Solution: Adjust warning levels and continually optimise your testing scenarios to reduce false alarms. Fine-tune synthetic tests by setting appropriate thresholds that focus on critical performance issues, so that your developers aren’t wasting time chasing their tail on issues that are either non-existent or really not important.
Why synthetic testing is crucial for proactive application monitoring
Synthetic testing offers a proactive way to identify performance issues, outages and other system defects before they impact users, making it essential for maintaining high-quality software. Synthetic testing will help you continuously monitors applications through simulated user behaviour, catching performance issues early and improving user experiences and service availability.
With powerful automation and integration capabilities, T-Plan helps teams implement effective synthetic testing strategies that safeguard application performance and reliability.
Ready to increase the performance and reliability of your application? Reach out to us today to learn how T-Plan can help you implement a robust synthetic testing strategy tailored to your needs.
