Selected User Forum Posts

Beginning in mid-2010 we have directed all technical support questions to the eValid User Forum. We have learned that when one user has an issue, all users can profit from the answer.

Here is an additional selection of some of the posts that we think would be of general interest.

1. The settings for sourceIndex and elementValue -- Rules about preserving internal variable values. 
2. Why doesn't eValid support XPATH? -- eValid's internal XPATH capabilities explained.
3. The value of sourceIndex -- Ways to retrieve the current value of internal parameters.
4. Synchronize a playback on an invisible property value. -- Unusual ways of achieving synchronization.
5. My website changes in the middle of the run -- What to look out for when web pages change rapidly. 
6. The minimum "settling time" -- How much time is spend "rendering" and "settling" a page? 
7. Text Synchronization -- Details of how to do synchronization on page text.
8. How do I turn on Application mode or Desktop mode? -- Internal mode change hints.
9. How well does eValid scale? -- Details on scaling eValid to high repetition counts.
10. A Dynamic String -- Methods of manipulating a dynamic string.

Mobile Device Rendering Validation Experiment

We had had some people asking whether the eValid rendering of a mobile web application REALLY matches up with what you actually see in the real device?

To illustrate that it does, we constructed a demo of four four popular smartphone and how they rendered a page compared with the eValid renderingwhen eValid is imitating the same device.The Rendering Comparison for Common Devices results speak for themselves.

As you can see in a side-by-side comparison (click th images and move them so theyare side by side) the HTML that is delivered by the server to the suitably disguised eValid browser is renders identically to what you see in the smartphone.

Webinar: Load Testing Mobile Web Apps

Simulate 1,000's of Mobile Browser Users Full AJAX Realism on All Mobile Devices Quick Identification of Bottlenecks

Wednesday, 16 November 2011 2:00 PM Eastern Time / 11:00 AM Pacific Time

QA/Testing/Tuning/Performance projects need to qualify performance of complex AJAX web applications -- within strict budget and time constraints -- to make sure their server-stack setups can meet the load. The traditional methods of ramping up load, based on using HTTP/S simulations or "VUs", don't always work when asynchronous AJAX applications are involved. VU's don't do AJAX. You need a browser. eValid server loading methods offer both quick-to-create, realistic, and fully synchronized AJAX functional tests. Plus you can lift those tests into performance/loading scenarios that can involve 100's or 1,000's or 10,000's of Browser Users ("BUs") per machine. In this webinar you'll learn: how special eValid commands overcome problems with variable-time playback dependency; how to create full-reality AJAX tests quickly; how to adjust tests to be totally self-synchronizing under stressed AJAX conditions; how to incorporate tests in an eValid LoadTest scenario; how to launch 100's or 1,000's or 10,000's of Browser User (BU) instances; and, how to analyze consolidated performance summary data to identify server-stack bottlenecks. This unique approach demonstrates how eValid becomes a genuine force multiplier in your web application performance testing efforts.

Webinar Topic Summary

eValid Architecture and Structure: How eValid functional and performance testing works. Functional Testing: How to make reliable recordings of AJAX applications. Making AJAX Tests "LoadTest Safe": How to augment tests for complete AJAX synchronization. Creating LoadTest Scenarios: How to use the LoadTest scenario editor to organize realistic LoadTest control scripts. Running LoadTests: How to launch single and multiple-instance runs using "cloud computing" resources. Finding Bottlenecks: How to read the LoadTest and other raw data to help spot server-stack issues.

You are cordially invited to attend this free Webinar.

Mobile Device Loading Experiment

Using eValid's ability to mimic being a mobile device, we engineered a simple demonstration of a 1,000 browser user (1,000 BU) test of a public transportation system's schedule information page, which is intended to be delivered to users of mobile devices. You're in the station and you want to know when the next train for your destination is? But you don't want it to take too long to show you the results, or you might miss your connection.

We set eValid up to imitate an iPhone, and configured the LoadTest scenario to launch successive eValid instances at 1 second intervals. The test script takes about 15 seconds to navigate to the website and download the key schedule data page. We put the playback in "repeat mode" so that, after all 1,000 BUs were launched there would be the equivalent of 1,000 users driving the mobile device.

Finally, the single data point taken from each and every repetition — some 5,587 data points in total — was the time that the actual data page took to download. Here's the chart of the results as a function ot time within the scenario:

Chart of Derived Internal Response Times (Click to See Full Image)

The payoff information here can be seen at the beginning of the chart, when the download time was pretty much independent of the applied load -- up to about 200 BUs. After that, the more users requesting that page, the longer it took, so that at the end, with 1,000 BUs asking the download time was as long as 5 minutes. It looks like someone'll be missing the bus!

Here is the link to the full solution description: Mobile Device Loading Experiment – 1,000 BUs