The City Survey Division of the City of Helsinki is changing their map data distribution from traditional file format based distribution to OGC interfaces. The feedback that Helsinki got from its customers after publishing the first services raised the need to test the response time and availability of the services. According to Anu Soukki, the Head of IT at the City of Helsinki, the risk management related to implementing spatial web services can be significantly improved by testing the usability of the services before publishing them.
The performance testing of the spatial web services of the City of Helsinki was executed in December 2014 by using Spatineo Performance. The performance tests that were executed a year earlier with the same product served as a reference point for the new tests. The goal was to run the previous year’s tests as similar as possible and in the similar hardware and operating system environment by using Geoserver. This is done to ensure that the service implemented with Geoserver meets the performance needs of the City Survey Division.
In performance testing, Spatineo Performance runs tests on a spatial web service by using simulated loads that correspond to the real use of the service. This way the bottlenecks of the service can be easily identified. Anu Soukki tells that their first testing in the year 2013 led to revising of the hardware capacity as well as changing the publishing software. The second testing gave further ideas for fine-tuning the datasets in order to meet the speed requirements set for the service.
