Features Added to LoadComplete 4.80

User-Defined Transactions

Support for Streaming Data

Support for Certificate Authentication

Runtime Reporting

New Metrics in Results

Other Improvements

You can now define one or multiple transactions in user scenarios. A transaction is an arbitrary series of test steps that relate to certain user task on the server like creating an order online, logging in and changing user preferences, retrieving specific data, and so on. To perform such a task, a user may need to open multiple pages, and the server will transfer data through various connections. A transaction brings all these actions together under the same roof.

LoadComplete gathers detailed results on transaction execution and helps you estimate the average, maximum and minimum completion time, the number of errors, the amount of data sent, and so on. That is, transactions help you check how the server handles specific user scenarios on your site.

Version 4.8 introduces support for streaming data and large files. The recording subsystem has been re-written. Now it transfers data between clients and the tested server much faster. This has made LoadComplete really transparent for the server and client, and has enabled you to create load tests for servers that transfer streaming data and large files. That is, now you can create tests for servers that broadcast video or audio content, for file servers that work with huge files like virtual machine images, and so on. For complete information on the provided support, see Load Testing of Streaming Contents and Large Data.

Note that LoadComplete stores the response data in the scenario and test log files. If the tested server returns large files or streaming data, these files can become huge. To keep their size within reasonable bounds, LoadComplete now uses a limit for response data: 50 MB maximum for a response.

You can now record and run load tests against web servers that use client certificates for authentication. To do this, you need to install a certificate on the computer where you will run the test. See Certificate Authentication for details. If you are going to simulate virtual users on remote machines, you need to install the certificate on these machines too.

• In earlier versions, the Runtime panel contains tab pages: Graphs, Execution Progress, Performance Counters. To improve the user experience and make information on these tabs more accessible, we have made these tabs separate panels that can easily be accessed from the Project Explorer. Now, you can open each panel individually and dock them within the LoadComplete window the way you like. Use these panels to track the test execution in real time.

• The new Runtime > Messages panel displays information on errors and other issues during the test run. You no longer need to wait for the test to complete to get this info.

The Summary report introduces new metrics:

• Warnings Percentage and Errors Percentage – The percentage of warnings and errors for all simulated test steps.
  In test logs created in LoadComplete 4.70, these metric values will be “unknown”.

• 95 Percent Response Time, 98 Percent Response Time and 99 Percent Response Time – The load time that covers 95%, 98% and 99% of simulated requests respectively.

• Standard deviation – The standard deviation of the response time values.

• User-defined transactions – The average, maximum and minimum time the user-defined transactions take.

• Time to last byte – The minimum, maximum and average time to last byte values.

• After the test run is over, LoadComplete copies the test log data from all remote stations on which your virtual users were simulated to your master computer. In the Agent Check dialog box, you can now cancel copying the test logs and discard all the log data. It can be useful when you realize you do not need the remote test logs and want to stop the test run faster.

• The Recording toolbar now shows the following information:

  • The amount of data processed (in kilobytes), that is, the amount of data that recorded requests and responses contain.

  • The number of warnings detected. These warnings indicate problems in the recorded traffic, for instance, the missing credentials when recording traffic for a web server that requires authentication or the server 404 response.

• The LoadComplete installer uses a newer InstallShield version. When installing LoadComplete in silent mode, you can use the /clone_wait argument of the InstallShield command line to wait for the installation to complete. See Installing LoadComplete and LoadComplete Remote Agent in Silent Mode.

• Also, we have fixed a number of bugs reported by our customers.