Active waterfall charts for continuous, real-time visualization of website performance data

A system comprising:

• a plurality of load servers that execute a load test on one or more webpages of a website, each load server including a processor coupled with a memory for executing the load test, the load test comprising a plurality of virtual users simulated by the load servers, each of the load servers being operable to compute aggregated results including statistics in real-time as the load test executes, the statistics including an average response time, the aggregated results being computed at periodic intervals and streamed in real-time;
• one or more analytic servers configured to receive the aggregated results streamed from the load servers, each analytic server including a processor coupled with a memory, the one or more analytic servers being at a different architectural level than the load servers and configured to produce aggregated test metrics in real-time as the load test executes from the aggregated results for all of the virtual users;
• a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows a user to display an active waterfall chart on an analytic dashboard, the active waterfall chart displaying information for a series of actions that occur when a virtual user accesses a particular webpage, the displayed information including a sequence of timeline bars, each of the timeline bars being displayed on a separate row of the active waterfall chart and representing an aggregated test metric result for an action taken to get an object, file, or resource of the particular webpage across all of the virtual users.