We introduced WAPT Pro 4.0 about a month ago. It was a long awaited release that we had been working on for more than two years. The full list of new features is available here as usual. This looks more like a marketing message, of course. If you want to know what I personally think about each feature, I can provide different comments using the same list. This is a kind of exclusive information for the readers of this blog.

1. Adjustable pass/fail criteria.

Good feature for people who need an exact answer to any question. In practice, this feature is useful for automated regression testing. When you start testing a new web application, don’t try setting a criterion in advance. You will need to review the report in any case.

2. Automatic analysis of test results.

Basically this is the same as pass/fail criteria implemented in JavaScript. The difference is that you can run the test one time and then apply as many methods as you want analyzing the results. This is definitely for sophisticated minds. I like that feature, because it lets you find very specific things in a large data volume. At the same time I realize that 99% of our users will hardly need this.

3. Customizable reports.

In fact this means that you can now remove unneeded data from the “Response time” table. Tools like a very small feature, but it really improves the readability of reports.

4. Performance degradation metrics.

You can set “baseline time” time for each request and see the difference after you run the test. I can tell frankly that I do not understand the importance of this feature. Many people speak about “performance degradation factors” and this seems to be popular. That is why we can measure it now.

5. Flexible error handling.

Another small, but very useful feature. Imagine that you need to test a web site that always produces an error on some request. If you just delete that request from the profile, the quality of emulation will suffer. If you disable breaking sessions on errors, you will have total mess in the report. Now you can disable error handling for that specific request and run test as usual.

6. Improved test recorder.

In fact, we have reworked it completely. Remember when you opened a long page in the old version, sometimes you had to wait for a minute before anything appeared in the left view. Now you see all HTTP requests immediately in a raw format. This creates a much better visualization for the recording process and removes any delays. All the recorded content is processed only after you click the “Stop Rec” button. I think that the new recorder is a real usability improvement.

7. 64 bit version of the workplace.

If you do not work with long profiles and reports, you will hardly notice the importance of this feature. As for me, I like it a lot, because I am tired of explaining why it is impossible to work with 5000 requests in a profile. While I still think that you should avoid creating such long profiles, I am happy to state that 64 bit version can work with that without crashing.

8. New GUI and usability features.

Well, we have replaced all the icons, but this is not what I wanted to mention. What is really useful is that you can now open as many WAPT Pro windows as you want. This way you can compare different test results and even work on different projects in parallel.

9. Integration with Jenkins.

It is still a big question if many of our clients use Jenkins… So, I need more time to estimate the importance of this feature. We will see.