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Author Archives: Ivan Lisitsyn
Efficiency and capacity of load testing tools
If you are looking for a load testing solution to check the performance of your web site, or to start using permanently in your web development process, you may need to analyze various characteristics of many tools before you make your choice. One of such characteristics is the efficiency.
If you want to test a web application used internally by your company staff, you may need to check that it supports, say, 100 concurrent user sessions.
This is not a very big load for any tool. You will hardly need more than one generating system to run such test.
The situation is completely different, if you need to stress test a popular internet portal. A load of 100,000 concurrent users can be a good check for it. […] Continue reading
Posted in General
Tagged efficiency, HTTP request, load test, load testing tools, stress testing, user session
4 Comments
Load testing a mobile website for iPhone
While mobile devices are replacing PCs for almost all possible applications, the Internet is also changing to address this technology shift. On the other hand, despite the unbelievable progress in the performance characteristics of smartphones and handheld computers, they are doomed to stay different from PCs by one parameter: screen size.
That is why most web sites offer different content when they are visited from a mobile device.
Of course, this content is usually just a reduced version with a very similar functionality. However the implementation of the underlying web application can be different.
As a result, your web site can experience significantly different performance problems when it is accessed by multiple mobile users.
Continue reading
Posted in Testing practice, WAPT usage
Tagged create test, HTTP headers, iPhone, load test, mobile device, recording test
3 Comments
Stress testing a web site with 100,000+ virtual users
It is not a typical load testing project when you need to create 100 thousand virtual users. More than half of all web load tests are conducted with just a thousand virtual users or less, because higher load is not actually anticipated on the target web site in production.
Note that we are not talking about the number of users per day or hour. Those are concurrent users working with the web site simultaneously, in parallel.
At the same time a huge load mentioned in the title of this article is not a fantasy.
Such tests are really required for web sites with growing audience and advanced client functionality. Imagine any web site that delivers customizable user-dependent content updating dynamically: stock quotes, online meetings and chats, monitoring tools, etc. […] Continue reading
Posted in Testing practice, WAPT usage
Tagged new release, performance testing, stress testing, WAPT Pro, x64 Load Engine
4 Comments
WAPT Pro 2.5 is finally released!
We have been working on this release for quite a while and now I am happy to announce the release of WAPT Pro 2.5. The product is available for download here. As usual, all registered users of WAPT Pro can upgrade free of charge.
We will also update the regular version of WAPT soon. It will include same features except the last two in the list below: we provide them only for the experts who use the Pro version. So, here is the list of new features.
Recording tests with Firefox, Chrome, or any other external browser
WAPT is now integrated with the most popular browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. You can use any of them to record user sessions for your test. You can also use any other external browser running on the same or different system as well as on a mobile device. […]
Continue reading
Posted in WAPT usage
Tagged Firefox, Google Chrome, new release, recording session, recording test, WAPT Pro
1 Comment
Creating a load test report
One of the most common questions in load testing is how to create a good test report that you would be able to present to your manager or customer. This big question actually consists of many smaller ones. What to start with? How to create the right test? What load parameters should be applied? How to interpret the results? Which numbers to look at when you browse through a long report generated by a load testing tool?
I will hardly answer all these questions and present the complete methodology in one article. This would be a long story and… it would be too boring. I know that there is a 90% chance that you really need something more simple and ready to use right away. I will simply present an example of the load testing report. A typical one, if you want. Continue reading
Posted in Testing practice
Tagged capacity test, load test, response time, stress testing, test report
69 Comments
Ten names for load testing
Load testing is a wide and established area of IT knowledge and software development practices. There are many professionals who specialize here and testing gurus ready to provide useful advices and even teach you a theory on the subject. Surprisingly, the mentioned gurus often do not agree with each other on the very basic terms used in this field.
If you search for information on load testing, most probably you will also find articles mentioning such terms as “performance testing” and “stress testing”.
Are they all just synonyms? Everybody agrees that they are not, but still different sources provide different definitions for these terms.
The most confusing point is the difference between performance and load testing. Some people reasonably say that […] Continue reading
Posted in General
Tagged load test, load type, performance testing, response time, stress testing
9 Comments
HTTP Redirects
Each HTTP response produced by a web site contains status code. Browser uses that code to interpret the meaning of the response. Basically there can be three different cases:
The request has been processed successfully by the server and the response body contains the requested resource (web page, image, etc.).
An error has occurred.
Server redirects the request to a new URL.
In the latter case the response contains a special “Location” header in which the new URL is provided. When browser receives such response, it automatically issues a new request using the specified URL. This way it can be redirected even to a different web site. The whole thing is done automatically, so the user does not see the process in the browser window. […] Continue reading
Posted in Testing practice
Tagged HTML form, HTTP headers, HTTP redirect, HTTP status code, test execution, web form
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Variables and parameters
In the previous post I demonstrated how to parameterize a simple profile. That profile consisted of only three requests. First request opened the main page of a web forum with sub-forums listed on it. Second request opened one of the sub-forums. Third one opened a topic inside that sub-forum.
The goal of the parameterization was to make WAPT open a random sub-forum on the second step and a random topic on the last step. Initially both were recorded as constant values.
The main idea was that when we want the value of a certain request parameter to be dynamic, we can use special functions to extract it from server response to the previous request. […] Continue reading
Posted in WAPT usage
Tagged extract value, parameterization, response processing, session variables, user session
37 Comments