Visual studio 2010 ultimate enable you to measure, improve and verify web application performance, Web performance test and load test only shipped with VS 2010 ultimate edition, i would like to mention that i will divide this topic into serial of blogs to be able cover all important technical points that web performance and load test covers,
Part 1: Overview of the web performance and Load test
Part 2: How to configure your visual studio environment to start web performance and Load test
Part 3: Run results and how to analyzing the load performance result
Part 4: Tips and Tricks
Part1: Overview of the web performance and Load test
Web performance Test enables verification that a Web application’s behavior is correct. They issue an ordered series of HTTP/HTTPS requests against a target Web application, and analyze each response for expected behaviors. You can use the integrated Web Test Recorder to create a test by observing your interaction with a target Web site through a browser window. Once the test is recorded, you can use that Web performance test to consistently repeat those recorded actions against the target Web application. Then you can customize your test by adding any extraction, validation rule, context parameters data sources (used to read randomize parameters) and make call to another web tests
Load Test is used to verify that your application will perform as expected while under the stress of multiple concurrent users. You configure the levels and types of load you wish to simulate and then execute the load test. A series of requests will be generated against the target application, and Visual Studio will monitor the system under test to determine how well it performs.
Load testing is most commonly used with Web performance tests to conduct smoke, load, and stress testing of ASP.NET applications. However, you are certainly not limited to this. Load tests are essentially lists of pointers to other tests, and they can include any other test type except for manual tests and coded UI tests. When you create a new Load Test, you are presented with a wizard that guides you through the necessary steps.
By the wizard you will able to configure your load test by the following configurations:
· Scenario Information
o Load pattern (constant load, step load)
o Test Mix Model based on (total no. of tests, no. of virtual users, user pace or sequential test order)
o Test Mix (add no. of previously created web tests and determined the distribution %)
o Network Mix (add multiple network types and determined the distribution %)
o Browser Mix (add multiple browser types and determined the distribution %)
· Counter sets
o You add the computers that you want to monitor and the performance counters you are interested in (you can monitor your Database Server and IIS)
· Run Settings
o You can specify the test duration or test iterations
Prerequisite steps to start your Load test:
· Start to record many web performance tests that reflect your test cases that cover the user business cases
· Each web test should cover only one test case (Flow)
· Check and validate each flow separately
· Existence of “LoadTest” DB
When you run the load test, you will see the Load Test Monitor; by default it will show the Graphs view.
How to prepare your scenarios:
Before start working with Visual studio, you need to set the test scenarios and workflows, that you will be used through your web performance test and then build your load test depending on these scenarios. Here under I designed the below table to assist you to prepare your flows and then construct your different scenario and determine the weight for each scenario.
The above table contains the following information:
Flow category: in this column you will list all the flow categories which group all your flows; I put one example for the first flow category (Login) which contains one flow (User Login flow).
Flow Name: in this column you will list all the flows which construct your flow category; as example if we have flow category named “Internet banking transaction list” for internet banking portal, we will find the following flows included:
· View latest Transaction for Current accounts
· View latest Transaction for Saving accounts
· View latest Transaction for Loan accounts
· View latest Transaction for card accounts
Scenarios: each scenario should composite from selected flow depend on the business cases from the customer prospective.
Weights: you need to set two weights, user % weight (which indicate the percentage of usage this flow with every user) and Scenario weight (which indicate the percentage of executing this scenario per users).
After completing the above table, now it seems you be ready to start working with visual studio and create your first test Project.
Will continue in (Part 2: How to configure your visual studio environment to start web performance and Load test)