Patent ID: 8676530

Claim:
A system to support performance testing of an application, comprising: one or more application servers operable to deploy and execute the application, wherein the one or more application servers are configured using a plurality of configuration properties, wherein the plurality of configuration properties of the one or more application servers are represented as a configuration space defined by a set of logical dimensions, and wherein each logical dimension in the configuration space represents a configuration property of the one or more application servers and each point in the configuration space represents a test run based on a particular variation of the plurality of configuration properties of the one or more application servers; and a load generating tool operable to generate and execute a first set of test runs to measure performance of the application, wherein the first set of test runs are performed based on a plurality of variations of the plurality of configuration properties of the one or more application servers; and a variation controller operable to: record correlation information for the first set of test runs, wherein the correlation information indicates how much change in each logical dimension of the configuration space from a first point in the configuration space affects the performance of the application; and build a correlation model among the plurality of configuration properties of the one or more application servers, based on the recorded correlation information, and identify a first configuration property that has the largest affect on the performance of the application at the first point in the configuration space in the first set of test runs.