WAPT usage

WAPT Pro 3.0 released!
General WAPT usage

WAPT Pro 3.0 released!

I wish I could make this post half a year ago. This is a really long awaited release, but it has finally happened. So, let’s see what’s new. Here is the list of added features. Sorry for so short descriptions. I will probably add more comments on some of these features in the next post.

Highly configurable test load

You can specify all load parameters separately for each virtual user profile. For example, you can join constant, growing and periodic load in the same test. You can also choose a specific load agent for each profile, if you do not want to use the automatic allocation [..]

Testing Silverlight Applications
WAPT usage

Testing Silverlight Applications

If you are going to load test a Silverlight web application with WAPT, first of all you need to install the corresponding extension module that you can download here.

This is a very easy task; you should simply download the file and run it. The module enables support for MSBIN1 format used by Silverlight applications to pass data between the client and server parts.

This format is binary. It can represent any complex data structure containing objects of various types, which can, in turn, contain other objects and so on until we come to some elementary objects like text strings or numbers. […]

WAPT Module for ASP.net testing
WAPT usage

WAPT Module for ASP.net testing

All ASP.net web applications use two specific parameters: __VIEWSTATE and __EVENTVALIDATION. When the client part of such application communicates with the server side, every produced HTTP request includes these two parameters.

Their values are essentially dynamic. In fact, they are changing for each request within a session. Of course, they are also different for different sessions.

This means that you cannot repeat the recorded requests “as is” to produce a copy of the recorded session.

Initially the values are produced by the server part of the application and transferred to the client inside the body of each response. After receiving the updated values the client should include them as parameters in the next request. […]

Load testing a mobile website for iPhone
Testing practice WAPT usage

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.

Stress testing a web site with 100,000+ virtual users
Testing practice WAPT usage

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. […]

WAPT Pro 2.5 is finally released!
WAPT usage

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. […]

Variables and parameters
WAPT usage

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. […]

Extracting values from server responses
WAPT usage

Extracting values from server responses

In this post I will continue using the profile mentioned here as an example. It contains a user session recorded at the following web forum: http://www.loadtest…

The session is very simple: the user opens the main forum page, enters into a sub-forum by clicking a link on that page and then clicks another link to display a topic. I made a small modification to that profile: I removed requests to iframes, because they are static and do not play any role in the session. So, the whole session now consists of 3 requests […]