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New Vugen Platform: SharpDevelop
To say that the look and feel of VuGen received a makeover in LoadRunner 11.5 would be somewhat of an understatement. It is a total rework from the ground up. The biggest change is the move from LCC and the GNU Pre-processor engine to the SharpDevelop platform. This has to do with what the custom (HP) code for VuGen sits upon for compilation. This in and of itself warrants a healthy discussion and a separate blog entry. It appears this move affords HP a little more benefit to add additional features Read Entire Entry

Let’s discuss the “ResourceByteLimit ” option in web_url() function within VuGen. This attributes can help emulate a user that does not wait for a complete page to download before clicking on another URL. It is typically used for testing the availability of a site (as opposed to load testing a site) while minimizing network traffic.
Before each resource download, the script replay engine will check if the total download size is less than the ResourceByteLimit specified. If so, it will continue the download. Else, it will stop the Read Entire Entry

Now that LoadRunner 11.5 is officially out, I wanted to share with you the LoadRunner 11.5 step by step installation to show you what’s changed. Each machine on which you are installing LoadRunner requires administration privileges.You’ll notice a new color theme for the splash screens and resulting install pages.
Click on “I Agree” in the EULA:
Fill out your Name and Organization information and click next.
Accept the default installation folder or change it to something else. Select which shortcuts you want to keep:
Click Next to Read Entire Entry

Even though the web_reg_save_param function was deprecated in the Vugen function reference and “readme” file for LoadRunner 11, please note that the NEW function, web_reg_save_param_ex is NOT what is automatically used by Vugen to correlate data during recording (in a case where you might have the Correlation Studio working to auto-correlate) for the web/http protocol. It still uses web_reg_save_param. As per the function reference, you will have to code web_reg_save_param_ex in manually.
If you attempt to take a script with Read Entire Entry

HP has officially announced the release of Loadrunner 11.5, and with it come a bevy of changes. The most immediately noticeable of these is a major retooling of the look and feel of VuGen.

Over the coming days, we’ll be breaking down and reviewing some of these changes in a couple of blog postings. Here is an overview of some of the major changes you can expect:

New and Improved VuGen – The whole look and feel of VuGen has been revamped here to include much more modular panes and viewing ability. While there are a handful Read Entire Entry

In October 2010, Loadtester Incorporated merged companies with Advanced QA. Both of these companies were HP Partners and Resellers, and had been all the way back to the Mercury Interactive days of 2004. Upon merging, the decision was made to take both companies and make them subsidiaries of the resulting company – and Northway Solutions Group was born.

For the last several months, Northway has been working diligently to migrate the information contained on the Loadtester.com web site into the NorthwaySolutions.com web site. W Read Entire Entry

In a previous blog, I reviewed Virtual Table Server and its history with LoadRunner. I wrote about many of my friends in the testing community who have contributed to it, talked about it, and used it in practice. Today, I want to introduce you to ANOTHER one of my longtime friends, Ed Leno of Solution Maniacs. Ed is one of the most talented performance engineers and consultants that I have had the privilege of working with over the years. He has decided to create a new utility application called SQUID (Simple Queues of Independent Read Entire Entry

I’ve been doing some research on “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD), which seems to be a new trendy thing to do. It’s pretty interesting to see how companies are dealing with the consumerization of IT, because it is shifting the entire IT culture right before our eyes.

Users (not IT professionals) are getting the latest technologies and gadgets first. It makes sense that they want to bring them to work and continue to use them. According to this 2011 survey by Good Technology, workers are willing to bear cost of the devices (as w Read Entire Entry

For many long-time users of LoadRunner, Virtual Table Server (VTS) has been an unsupported tool that many of us have relied upon to solve dynamic data dependency issues under load. VTS is a virtual data file that multiple load generators can reference to create, modify, and consume data Think of it as a “living” data file (or table) that runs in memory. The load generators can get values from a single pool of data on the fly. One Vuser can create new data, and any other Vusers can immediately consume it. I’m not sure who originally Read Entire Entry

For the past few months, I’ve been presenting on planning for the perfect storm  for realistic, but worst case situations and how to properly scope application performance testing projects based on some best practices I have learned over the years. I’m always looking for new material. Last week, I got some.  On Friday (5/18/12), the whole world watched as Facebook finally had their IPO, and LOTS of people wanted to buy shares – but couldn’t. A “software glitch” was the culprit. Did you ever notice, it is always called a “glitch”? Read Entire Entry