Category Archives: Testing practice

Everything about testing in practice: hints, use cases, etc.

How to analyze a load test report? Part 1: Basics

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Ivan Lisitsyn

After you run a test with a load testing tool such as WAPT, you normally get a long report with many tables and probably some charts with performance parameters. At first glance all these numbers do not help you answering a very simple question that you actually have: was the test successful or not?

However if you know where to look, in most cases you can get this answer in just few minutes if not seconds.

The information in the test report can be divided into the following categories.

* Parameters of the generated load;
* Errors occurred inside user sessions;
* Response time data;
* Throughput data;
* Other parameters. Continue reading →

Posted in Testing practice, WAPT usage | Tagged load test, test report, user session, virtual user profile | Leave a comment

Extreme online shopping with WAPT Pro

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Ivan Lisitsyn

Recently we have discovered that our load testing solution can be applied in a quite unusual way. One of our users has shared his “success story” with us. It perfectly shows how widely you can apply the product if you know its features very well and have a good fantasy.

The story is actually about Cyber Monday online shopping. You know, some web sites run very special actions to attract customers. They sell limited number of items at exceptionally low prices. In theory you can make a very good deal if you participate. In practice this is almost impossible, because each new item is ordered by someone immediately after it becomes available. Here is where WAPT Pro appeared to be a great automation solution. Continue reading →

Posted in General, Testing practice, WAPT usage | Tagged load test, online shopping, response time, response validation, WAPT Pro | Leave a comment

Load testing a mobile website for iPhone

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Ivan Lisitsyn

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

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Ivan Lisitsyn

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

Creating a load test report

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Ivan Lisitsyn

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

HTTP Redirects

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Ivan Lisitsyn

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 | Leave a comment

JavaScript in load testing

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Ivan Lisitsyn

Sometimes people ask if a web load testing tool supports JavaScript. They basically want to know if it is possible to apply the tool to test a web application implemented with JavaScript. The answer is usually obvious. Most load testing tools do not need to execute JavaScript code contained on web pages. This code is executed by the browser when the test is recorded.

So, the only requirement for the load testing tool is that it should be able to record all AJAX requests produces by the JavaScript code on the loaded page. These requests are used to update the page content in the browser. Since they carry additional data, they should be reproduced during the test when the user session is replayed. […]
Continue reading →

Posted in Testing practice | Tagged extract value, JavaScript, parameterization, RegExp, regular expression, response validation, session variables, test execution log, virtual user profile | 1 Comment

Response validation rules

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Ivan Lisitsyn

In the previous post I wrote about the test verification. The main idea was that before you launch a test you need to check that all your virtual user profiles can be executed correctly. In other words, the execution of a profile should produce a valid user session. It should not end with an error because the profile is incorrectly parameterized. Otherwise instead of the real testing you will simply load the web site with tons of incorrect requests.

One important thing that I also mentioned was that sometimes when a web site receives incorrect data in the request, it replies with the 200 status code contained in the response header, which means success. However at the same time it includes an error message in a human readable form in the body of the same response. […] Continue reading →

Posted in Testing practice | Tagged error type, HTTP status code, response validation, test execution log, virtual user profile | Leave a comment

Verifying a test before run

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Ivan Lisitsyn

Designing a test for a web site with essentially dynamic content may be a rather complex and time consuming task. It is similar to programming in some respect. Even though there are good testing tools that let you automate the … Continue reading →

Posted in Testing practice, WAPT usage | Tagged error type, parameterization, test execution log, test verification, user session | Leave a comment

On parameterization

Posted on February 14, 2011 by Ivan Lisitsyn

To create a load test we record a typical user session with help of a browser and a load testing tool. We want to use that session as a template to emulate hundreds or even thousands users working with our … Continue reading →

Posted in Testing practice, WAPT usage | Tagged parameter value, parameterization, request parameters | 12 Comments

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