Synchronizing Multiple eValid Instances

In many of our fixed-price PerformanceTest Service Projects a common requirement is to provide a sharp increment in the total number of BUs -- a kind of "step function" for the server stack that acts to "ring out" problems the same way an step function signal does for an electronic circuit.

eValid provides multiple techniques to do this, all of based on the use of the internal synchronization/logic commands such as SyncOnText. When (for example) 100's or 1,000's of eValid BUs are all running in parallel and they are all waiting for a particular DOM element to take on a particular value, the total "width" of the step function measures out to about 1-2 seconds, even when the BUs are located on separate machines.

The real world results we get doing this kind of step function are very interesting because a near-simultaneous burst of new activity can often overload servers, load-balancers, database back-end machine, etc. A lot of performance and diagnostic data in a very short time.

Recent and Upcoming Conferences & Technical Community Events

Here are links to some technical meetings that may be of interest to WQN readers:

• Special Issue on Advances in Software Testing, International Journal of Systems Assurance Engineering and Management
• ISCE 2011: 4th India Software Engineering Conference, 23-27 February 2011, Thiruvananthapuram, India.
• 7th Workshop on Model-Based Testing 2-3 April 2011, Saarbruken, Germany, EU
• 8th International Conference on Information Technology New Generations: ITNG 2011 - Software Testing, 11-13 April 2011, Las Vegas, Nevada,USA

Community events like these deserve very careful consideration!

Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Support

Test Complex AJAX Applications Quickly and Efficiently
Run 1,000's of Browser Users (BU's) Easily and Efficiently
Monitor End-User Performance Accurately
Analyze Websites From The Client Perspective
Very Attractive SME License Offers

Wednesday, 27 October 2010
2:00 PM Eastern Time / 11:00 AM Pacific Time

In small and medium enterprises the world over, QA/Testing/Performance groups often face the job of qualifying the quality and performance of complex web applications -- including AJAX applications -- and are expected to do this within severe budget and time constraints.

eValid offers a comprehensive and self-contained solution to 99% of web application testing issues that is optimized for use in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

In this webinar you'll learn how eValid's features overcome common problems with variable-time playback dependency; how to create a full-reality AJAX regression test quickly; how to lift a test into a sever loading scenario; that launchs 100's or 1,000's of Browser User (BU) instances; and, how to set up a site analysis scan to validate a complete website.

Overall, you'll see how easily eValid can become a genuine force multiplier in your company's web application quality assurance, testing and performance tuning projects.

This Webinar Will Discuss:

* eValid Architecture: How eValid functional testing, monitoring, performance testing and site scanning components.
* Functional/Regression Testing: How to make regression recordings -- including complex AJAX applications.
* Imposing Server Load: How to create a LoadTest scenario and run it against your servers, with 100's or 1,000's of BUs.
* Creating a Realistic Monitor Script: How to provision a script for use as a monitoring agent for complex applications -- including AJAX.
* How to Scan a WebSite Quickly and Accurately Search criteria and limits setup to yield a very effective site scan.

You are cordially invited to attend this free Webinar.
REGISTER NOW!

eValid for Use in Coursework at Universidade Federal de Campina Grande (UFCG)

We recently provided copies of eValid for use in coursework at Universidade Federal de Campina Grande (UFCG) and here are some comments by one of the students.

What course was this for at UFCG?

I'm currently taking undergraduate classes in the course of Computer Science at UFCG.

The professor name is Patricia Machado.

What was your goal for the demonstration.

The goal of the demonstration was to show to the crowd a demo of a tool. The teacher choose a bunch of tools test related, and I was asked to perform a demo of eValid.

What about eValid functionality did you show off and what were the impressions you got?

I've focused on the test functionality. Basically I've created a test on a website, then I've modified the website and ran the test again, showing that the test was resulting in a error.

Besides, I took a look on the performance analysis functionality, and I've really appreciated it.

I really enjoyed the [page] metrics.

What was the reaction of the others?

Everybody enjoyed the presentation, and the teacher was really impressed about all functionalities provided by eValid.

May we use your name and email address?

Sure you can, just let me know as soon as it happens, please.

I have nothing else to say, other than congratulates the team for the good job. I'm also very satisfied about this kind of contact you guys have provided me and I would be very glad if this kind of behavior keep coming.

Cheers!

Felipe Vieira,
UFCG Student
(felipe29vieira@gmail.com)

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.

• The Comparative Level of Effort of eValid Recording... -- Discusses the relative level of effort of using eValid versus other kinds of technical approaches.
• Comparing An Actual Value At Some DOM Element -- Explains how to compare an actual value in a page by reading and manipulating the current contents of the DOM.
• eValid Faithfully Emulates An IE Browser -- Discusses how we made sure that eValid was as close to IE behavior as possible.
• Can eValid Test An Application That Involves Two Browsers? -- Describes conditions under which two [or more] eValid instances can operate at the same time, in combinations of record AND playback.
• DOM Values -- How to use eValid commands to extract, save, and insert DOM values from one test context to another.
• Wht is your structural testing really good at? -- Describes when the structural testing methods are needed, and how effective they are.
• About "SyncOnText" -- Describes how eValid AJAX synchronization logic works, and what the overhead is likely to be when you are waiting for a DOM feature to synchronize AJAX activity.
• Query Strings -- Explains how to deal with URLs that have complex query string (client side parameters).
• A Different IP Address -- Details on when eValid can "spoof" being on a different IP address.

Please Contact Us for additional details about any of these topics.

Recent and Upcoming Conferences & Technical Community Events

Here are links to some technical meetings that may be of interest to WQN readers:

• 2nd International Workshop on the Quality of Service-Oriented Software Systems (QUASOSS'10), 4 October, 2010, Oslo, Norway
• 5th International Workshop on Systems Software Verification (SSV'10), 6-7 October 2010, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
• 8th CREST Open Workshop: Advanced Mootation* Testing 27 October 2010, University College, London, England (* "Mootation Testing" is a second order mutant of "Mutation Testing")
• 2nd International Workshop on Software Aging and Rejuvenation (Part of ISSRE 2010), 1 November 2010, San Jose, California, USA.
• 22nd IFIP International Conference on Testing Software and Systems (ICTSS), 8-10 November 2010, Natal, Brazil.
• 2010 Workshop on Verification, Validation and Uncertainty Analysis in High-Performance Computing (VVUHPC 2010), 14 November 2010, New Orleans, LA, USA.
• The Future of Software Engineering Symposium 22-23 November 2010, ETH, Zurich, Switzerland.

Community events like these deserve very careful consideration!

High BU-Count Server Performance Testing Projects

eValid users are already aware of the use of multiple eValid instances -- called Browser Users (BUs) -- to generate 100% realistic load on servers. Each BU runs as a separate Windows process, and each can handle very complex applications including AJAX and database-related applications.

To get high BU counts requires that we use two methods:

• The first method involves making OS parameter changes to increase the size of the virtual memory, increase the desktop heap size, and change the performance option to optimize for background operations.
• Even with these adjustments, each desktop user still runs up against a limit on the number of GDI Objects per user session. To overcome this constraint, we open additional user accounts on the driver machine.

Using EC2 cloud machines to drive very heavy BU-count loads, we usually employ 8-core High-Memory and/or High-CPU machine images. One such machine, properly configured, yields 1,000+ BUs per machine depending on the test duty-cycle and machine resource use. All of these methods come together in our PerformanceTest projects, which offer load generation up to 100,000 BUs in parallel,