How we add new virtual users to a test can be confusing when you’re first starting out with Load Tester, and sometimes can result in tests that do not ramp up to the number of users you expect or otherwise behave strangely.
How to measure the maximum capacity of your website in terms of concurrent users.
New software includes click to configure test case development, visual performance indicators, user-level analysis and expanded compatibility with AJAX and .NET.
Durham, NC – May 7, 2009 – Web Performance, Inc. (WPI) released the most recent version of its industry-leading load testing application last week. Web Performance Load Tester version 3.6 includes a number of new features that make it even easier to use and more intuitive for its non-programmer user base.
One of the application’s most appealing new features is its use of visual displays and video demonstrations that let users with zero programming experience create test cases, run load … Continue reading »
My first day at Velocity was long, but fun. I breathed a sigh of relief when my luggage finally arrived…10 hours after I did.
I attended part of a Load Testing workshop early in the afternoon that raised some interesting topics:
Why are steady ramps bad? They showed some examples of how this approach can result in the wrong conclusions about system capacity. I agreed heartily – I’ve blogged on the merits of a stepped ramp in load tests previously.
Abandonment rates – This is a feature that I’d like to get into Load Tester sooner rather than later. A basic … Continue reading »
Overview
You’re recording test cases, configuring them, replaying them, and running load tests. One day, you attempt to test a new web application. However, every time you attempt to run a replay, the replay throws an extractor error; it is unable to find a field in the page content of the replay to extract. ASM configured this field automatically, so why isn’t it working? You look at the replay content … and the field name isn’t there.
The usual culprit that causes this problem is a dynamic field name: a variable in a dynamic web page that not only changes in value, … Continue reading »
As web applications become more sophisticated, configuration of testcases used to test the application becomes more difficult. The need for customization, beyond the automatic configuration provided in Load Tester, means that testers need to spend more time understanding the application. One common scenario finds the tester searching through the application pages to determine where a field is assigned, in order to configure a custom extractor to get the value dynamically. Several of the features added in Load Tester 3.6 makes this process much easier.
In the example below, the Search View is used to find a field with dropUsers in the … Continue reading »
Enabling dynamic compression in IIS 7.0 can reduce the bandwidth usage on a particular file by up to 70%, but also reduces the maximum load a server can handle and may actually reduce site performance if the site compresses large dynamic files. Read the full report for a complete analysis.
matt
Enabling mod_deflate can reduce the bandwidth usage on a particular file by up to 70%, but also reduces the maximum load a server can handle and may actually reduce site performance if the site compresses large dynamic files. Read the full report for a complete analysis.
ChrisWhen his dad brought home a Commodore PET computer, Chris was drawn into computers. 7 years later, after finishing his degree in Computer and Electrical Engineering at Purdue University, he found himself writing software for industrial control systems. His first foray into testing software resulted in an innovative control system … Continue reading »
One of our competitors has recently been emphasizing the use of their monitoring network during load tests. The pitch goes something like this: “With our last-mile monitoring network you can determine how different geographical regions will experience your web pages.” This solution has been implemented by using testing agents in the homes of real consumers to measure performance during a load test.
At first glance, this peaked our interest. However, after some analysis, we started to question the real value of this approach to load testing:
Will this approach dilute the value of the load test results?
Can the same information be obtained … Continue reading »
Load Tester has supported the concept of a performance goal for quite a while, but the implementation has been rather limited. We have completed work on an improved version for our next release (3.6). Load Tester now provides the ability to set a performance goal for each web page and/or transaction in a testcase individually. Of course, you can still specify a global page performance goal, as you could in the past. In addition, users can specify a default page (or transaction) duration goal for an entire testcase and then override that value for each page or transaction. The performance … Continue reading »