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This document provides somes tips to improve performance of your Jira instance while using Xray. These ; tips cover normal usage, configuration and setup. It assumes that you have some Jira and Xray background.

As Xray is built on top of Jira, the first thing you neeed to make sure is that your Jira instance is properly configured and tunned beforehand. Thus, we recommend looking at Jira specifics section first.

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Xray mainly uses Jira issue types for implementing Test Management related entities, such as:

• Test - for specification;
• Pre-Condition - for complementing the specification of one or more test cases;
• Test Set - for organizing Tests in lists;
• Test Execution  - for scheduling executions of tests;
• Test Plan - for defining the test plan against some scope (e.g. version/sprint) and track its progress.

The only relevant exception to use issue types are Test Runs. A Test Run is an internal entity managed by Xray itself, which is an The only relevant exception are Test Runs. A Test Run is an internal entity managed by Xray itself, which is an instance of a Test containing also its result related data.

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Common Tips

Common Tips

This document sums up tips to keep the performance of Xray This document sums up tips to keep the performance of Xray and JIRA as optimized as possible.

The tips are grouped by area or topic; therefore, they do not follow any specific order. However, you should start by looking at the Jira specifics and Process related tips first.

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Large organizations or organizations with huge amounts of data and/or having many users should consider Jira Data Center, which increases performance and improves throughput on higher concurrency usage scenarios; it also provides high-availability for critical scenarios.

There are some general Jira administration related tips that you may want to consider; there are many, so please consider these just as a starting point.:

1. Moderate the usage of custom fields
   

   1. Managing custom fields in JIRA effectively;

   2. Optimizing custom fields;
2. Moderate workflow usage, in terms of their complexity (i.e. number of workflow steps);
3. Evaluate the plugins/apps you need as some may impact performance.

Process

1.  "Unified" development process: define a process that can be applied to all teams in the way how to manage the STLC. Every team is different and has its own needs, therefore your process should not be too strict but it should provide some guidance on how development life cycle should be addressed, covering requirement management, bug management and test management. Having teams working completely in different ways, hardens communication and leads to unproper and unoptimized tool usage. If you have a well-defined process that can be used organization wide, better; this is the key to ensure an optimal usage and have the best performance.
2.  Are you adopting Agile and Scrum? Check out Using Xray in an Agile context for tips on how you can take advantage of Xray in such scenarios;. Agile software development page provides high-level overview of Agile and Agile Testing and besides background information on them, it will also provide some useful tips so your team can be more Agile and avoid doing things that are unnecessary.

3.  Each Xray entity has a purpose/fit that you should try to take advantage of. You're not obligued to use all of them; you even can choose to use some over other ones. In order to have an optimum usage of Xray, we would recommend understanding, first of all, the purpose of each entity.

   Expand

   Entity / Issue Type Purpose Test For making the specification of some test; a test case template;. Pre-Condition For abstracting some initial condition that one or more tests must assure; reusable, i.e. linked to one or more test cases. Test Set For creating lists of test cases, so you can easily pick those test cases afterwards in case you need them Test Execution For scheduling a execution of a bunch of test cases in some version&revision of the SUT;. a A Test Execution contains several Test Runs, one per each ”linked” test cased. Sub Test Execution Similar to a Test Execution; the difference between them is that the Sub-Test Execution is a sub-task and can be created within the context of a requirement. Creating a Test Execution as a sub-task of the requirement issue provides you the ability to track executions in the Agile board. Test Plan For grouping multiple Test Executions and presenting a consolidated overview of them; tracks the results of some Tests in some version/sprint of the SUT. Test Run An instance of a Test in the context of some Test Execution; contains a copy of the original Test specification along with the recorded results. It’s not an issue type. Test Repository A per project hierarchical organization of Test cases using folders; an alternate approach to Test Sets for organizing test cases. Test Plan Board A per Test Plan hierarchical organization of Test cases, at the planning phase, using folders. It is used for... grouping, organizing the tests in the context of the Test Plan and to easily track the results of certain Tests grouped in some folder; easily change the ranking of the Tests, to create Test Executions for them afterwards.

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1.  Instead of creating one Test Plan for your release, you may create multiple Test Plans to track different Tests (e.g. manual vs automated or regression vs NRT); this may be useful if you want to have clear visibility of how certain groups of Tests are progressing and if their execution lifecycle life cycle is different from other ones. It will also make your Test Plans considerable lighter.
2.  If adopting Scrum, create Test Plans per Sprint, to track the testing being done in the scope of your Sprint; manage them as artifacts of your Sprint and add them to your Scrum boards so everyone sees their progress. Per each Sprint you may have more than one Test Plan; check out some possible usage patterns here. 

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1.  Don't add many custom fields to Tests, specially if they're calculated, as it will add some additional overhead to Jira.
2.  We recommend up to 5 linked Tests reequirement per each requirementTest; ideally a Test should be focused on the validation of one requirement.
   

   • This recommendation helps improve performance both on the TestRunStatus and Requirement Status calculations and also when loading the issue screens and reports.

3.  Promote reusability and avoid cloning Test cases, if they’re the same. A Test can be reused multiple times and can be used to cover more than one requirement (if really needed), no matter in which project it is located.

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1.  Creating a Test Plan from within some Test Repository folder that has many Tests and sub-folders can take some time, if you choose to replicate the folder structure into the destination Test Plan Board. However, this overhead is just temporary.
2.  Avoid many folders shown at the same time as it will impact browser performance at some time. You can do this by limiting of direct child folders you create at a given parent folder and by using the "Expand all" moderately. The amount of folders you have does not affect by itself your Jira backend performance though.

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1.  Upload only relevant test results (e.g. don’t upload unit test results); choose properly what testing results you want to track within Xray.
2.  Choose properly the upload frequency
   1. Aggregate relevant results in some job run periodically (e.g. hourly, daily) and submit those.
3.  Don’t mix the CI tool with TM tool
   • Leave the highly detailed execution info on the CI tool.

REST API

1.  Review the "Max results per request" setting in the the Miscellaneous administration settings as it controls the pagination on the REST API calls. The default value should be ok.
2.  Limit API calls (to Jira and Xray related endpoints) using a reverse proxy
   1. Evaluate what REST API calls are being used, discuss their real need with users
      1. Make sure that pagination is being used on the REST API calls
   2. Restrict access to REST API calls
      1. Limit access to well-known hosts/applications
3.  Export  Export results endpoint (i.e. /rest/raven/1.0/testruns) allows you to include custom fields from the Test issues in the response, using includeTestFields parameters; please choose carefully what fields you choose to include, as some of these may be calculated and thus add some additional overhead to the request.
4. Whenever Image Added Whenever searching for issues using Jira's REST API (i.e. api/2/search), please choose explicitly what fields to return iusing the fields parameter; that will avoid including unnecessary fields that are included by default and that can add 

5. api/2/search

    
6. https://confluence.xpand-it.com/display/XRAY/Export+Execution+Results+-+REST
7. add overhead to the request. This can be aggravated if this endpoint is used automatically by some integration with an external application.
8. Diamantino Campos Diamantino Campos  vai ver o q mandou pra ubs; podes fazer-me fwd?

Reporting

JQL

Xray provides dozens of JQL functions but you have to use them carefuly to make sure your instance is not affected. Please do train your users on JQL before "allowing" to use them throughout Jira.

1.   Using unoptimized JQL queries can degrade performance substantially
   1. most times this happens because users don't understand how JQL works first of all; JQL is not like SQL (see Understanding JQL Performance). Thus, filtering issues by project by adding the "project = <xxx>" clause is not the same as specifying the project as argument to the subsequent JQL function.
      
      1. Example: 

         1. Use

            issue in requirements('OK','CALC')

            ...instead of ...

            project = 'CALC' and issue in requirements('OK')
            
            

2.  Some JQL functions, such as the ones dealing with requirement coverage, may be more intensive than other ones, since Xray may have to, for example, load all the related Test Runs in order to obtain relevant data. The following JQL Some care should be taken with the following JQL functions:

   1. testPlanTests() - whenever by tests in a given status; the current workaround is to search using the "TestRunStatus" custom field. 

      Note
      title Please note
      When searching for Tests with a certain status inside a Test Plan, we recommend you to use the custom field search instead. Xray has created a new way of searching with big improvements when filtering by test status, using the Custom Fields: (3) issuetype = Test and TestRunStatus = "DEMO-10 - TODO" (4) issuetype = Test and TestRunStatus = "DEMO-10 - TODO environment:IOS"and TestRunStatus = "DEMO-10 - TODO environment:IOS"

   2. requirements() - whenever filtering by dates, as shown in the following example:

         requirements('OK',

                   'Calculator',  

                   'v1.0',

                   'chrome' 

                   'false'

                   '2014-08-30')

      requirements() - whenever filtering by by dates

   3. testExecutionTests() (Diamantino Campos tem duvidas... podes confirmar pf?)  - whenever filtering by tests/requirements in a given status; it will depend on the amount of Tests you have on the Test Execution
   4. parentRequirements() (Diamantino Campos tem duvidas.. podes confirmar pf?)  - depending on the amount of requirements and sub-requirements you have, it can take a while to complete and require some resources
   5. Diamantino Campos , any other Jql function?

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1.   Xray provides some specific custom fields that calculate their values on the fly. This means that you should have that in mind, specially if you're including them in tables/issue listings/gadgets.
   1. The most intensive custom fields are the "Test Execution Defects" and the "Test Set Status" (isto ja nao é verdade, certo Diamantino Campos? há aqui algum custom field calculado em realtime a salientar?).  The "Tests Count", as it does an aggregation, also is intensive if you use it for multiple issues.

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1.  One way of doing reporting is by using gadgets. Gadgets are great to share information between team members and even between different teams; however, if not use carefully, they can degrade JIRA Jira performance if all users have the same report on their dashboard as they will probably generate multiple requests once users access the dashboard. Thus, use carefully most intensive gadgets such as the "Historical Daily Requirement Coverage" and the "Tests Evolution" gadget and others that do aggregations (e.g. "Test Runs Summary" gadget). Gadgets that just "list" entities should not affect performance significatively.
2.  Limit the target issues for the reports/gadgets, i.e. generate the Overall Requirement Coverage (report/gadget) just for issues that you really need and not all Jira requirements or projects; the setting "Max number of requirements per report or gadget results" (available under Miscellaneous) acts as a maximum limit for some reports/gadgets.

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1.  Choose properly the filters you use for each gadget, in order to restrict the amount of issues that will be processed
2.  Don't use low small (i.e. intensive) refresh times as they will add some overhead to the Jira instance
3.  Use shareable dashboards to have the high-level overview and the things that matter but avoid creating highly complex dashboards
4.  Try to normalize the dashboards and make them like a standard organization wide; it will facilitate communication and avoid “wrong”/unoptimized usage

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1.  Beware with calculated custom fields implemented using some customization app (e.g. Jira Misc Custom Fields, ScriptRunner, etc) as they will be calculated each time they're accessed and they can impact things such as:
   • indexing time;
   • REST API calls (e.g. whenever searching issues);
   • on listings (e.g. on Issues search page, Filters Results gadget, Xray tabular sections) if they're included as columns.
2.  Adding a lot of custom fields on Jira will add some overhead on performance; therefore, Atlassian itself recommends a responsible usage of custom fields. Please see more on Optimizing custom fields.

Workflows on Xray entities

1.  Don't use complex workflows for Xray entities as it will harden their usage; if the workflows have many steps then it will impact overall Jira performance.

Reindex

1.  Xray provides some maintenance operations that can be used under certain circumstances, if needed. If you clear some of Xray calculated custom fields, either using Integrity Checker > Calculated Custom Field Values option in administration settings or using the available bulk operations for Requirement Status and TestRunStatus custom fields, it will impact the reindex time considerable as the values have to be all recalculated. 
2. Diamantino Campos haverá algum custom field que possa ser excluido do reindex e que afecte o tempo de reindex dramaticamente?

Other operations

1.  Avoid bulk cloning Test plans or Test Executions using some specific apps for that purpose; cloning multiple issues at the same time can add some overhead to Jira as these can affect the calculations of the statuses of Tests and requirements.

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1.  Review Atlassian's best practices for Data Center and the Node sizing overview for Atlassian Data Center article.
2.  Configure your load balancer properly to use dedicated nodes for REST API calls, which can reduce impact on other application nodes.
3. Integration with other apps
   1.  Please see eazyBI's Data Center related recommendations here.

References

• Jira in general

  • Managing custom fields in JIRA effectively

  • Optimizing custom fields
  • Understanding JQL Performance
• Data Center
  • Best practices for Atlassian Data Center
  • Node sizing overview for Atlassian Data Center
  • Traffic distribution with Atlassian Data Center
  • Jira Data Center size profiles
• Other
  • Knowledge is Power: Visualizing JIRA's Performance Data