We have been working on this for quite some time. Now a new version of WAPT Pro is about to appear, and this time we decided to start with releasing it in beta. Even though the tool GUI looks almost unchanged, all parts that actually do the work (test recorder and load generation unit) have been completely rewritten. This was not done just to squeeze out a few percent of performance or because the old code was bad. It was very good for executing user sessions consisting of successive HTTP requests. This concept is still applied by the majority of the load testing tools, but we wanted to become the true concurrency pioneers.
The idea was initially inspired by the advent of HTTP/2, which features concurrency within a single connection by design. However what is now so easily done with HTTP/2 was actually possible to do with the earlier version of the protocol, but required opening multiple connections to the website. This was widely criticized as a very unthrifty approach, yet browsers started utilizing concurrent connections to speed up page load more than a decade ago. This was silently ignored by the vendors of the performance testing tools, because this was something really hard to implement with required efficiency and without complicating the test specification. Couple years ago we added the ability to use concurrent connections for page elements in WAPT Pro 4.0, but we could not get further at the moment.
Now we are ready to make the next step and introduce WAPT Pro 5.0 capable of executing concurrent requests within each user session. This essentially means that it creates true browser emulation with either version of HTTP protocol. Only few other tools can presently do this, but it will require programming skills form you to implement concurrency in them. With WAPT this is as easy as usual: just record and run.
We have not scheduled the official release yet, but beta versions of WAPT Pro 5.0 and x64 Load Engine are already available for download.
If you are using a previous version of WAPT or WAPT Pro, you can install the above versions on the same system without inducing conflicts. Extension modules are compatible between versions. Any active WAPT Pro 4.x license is applicable for the new version. This upgrade will be covered by the license maintenance, so you will be able to switch at any time free of additional charge.
You are welcome to report any problems and send comments regarding new version to our support address or use the “Ask for assistance” feature in the tool to upload your test files to us. We will be happy to hear from you as usual.
