Service Virtualization

Hi All,

I would like to do a load test  using CA Application test. Designed a test case that will generate JMS messages based on input sheet (Data Set - Read rows from Excel file )  i.e. each row can be a single message, and message will be placed in a JMS queue for processing by the application. I came to know that we can do performance testing by providing load using Staging document. My requirement is when we are providing n virtual users (instances ) in staging document , each user should take unique row from data set . .

That is if 30 instances are in stating document and 30 records in input sheet , each virtual user should take unique one record from data set and need to run parallely

if 15 virtual users and 30 records , each should take 2 unique records.

Could anyone please suggest on this, how can we achieve this using CA Application test.

Thanks in advance!

Assumption:  The rows in your dataset have no inter-dependency.

Make sure your dataset is defined in the first step of your test case.  

Ensure that the dataset is set to Global (not local).  Decide what to do At End of data.

You should not need to loop the test case back to the dataset to process the next row.  Let the TC end as if the test case only processes the first row and stops. 

NOTE:  In the above example, it was OK for the dataset to start over because there was no data dependencies.  We also had several hundred thousand rows of data in the spreadsheet.

When using the test in a staging document, the Coordinator will handle reading the rows and passing them to the virtual users which are running as Simulator instances.  

You can use the Staging Doc to set up a performance profile with the number of virtual instances, ramp up, etc.  The below provides a simple example of continuously running the above test case with 200 virtual users for 5 minutes.  The Coordinator stops giving rows of data to the virtual users so that each instance of a test shuts down gracefully after 5 minutes.  You will see a slight ramp up and ramp down since instances of the test case can theoretically end at different times depending on the search time incurred by the System Under Test.

Since you are running only 15 users, it is unlikely that you will need to set up the reporting for a load test, but those settings are configured in the Reports tab of the Staging Doc.

Hi Joel,

Thanks for your inputs.

I tried what you told. It works.

But what if in the same test case another data has a loop to perform a particular task and then again it will go to first data set  as a loop.

Will this approach work ?

You might get away with another loop inside the one test case, but I would consider implementing the second loop inside a sub-process.  The main process can call the sub-process, pass the necessary variables, and the subprocess can loop over the rows and return to the outer process.  The outer process will follow the above pattern since its dataset is governed by the Coordinator.  

Try not to develop an overly complex solution.  My personal style is to follow the Keep-It-Simple model.  As complexity increases, it becomes more difficult to debug and could impact throughput.