Introduction to Microsoft Application Test Center

What is Microsoft Application Test Center?

Application Center Test is designed to stress test Web servers and analyzes performance and scalability problems with Web applications, including Active Server Pages (ASP) and the components they use.

Application Center Test simulates a large group of users by opening multiple connections to the server and rapidly sending HTTP requests.

Application Center Test supports several different authentication schemes and the SSL protocol, making it ideal for testing personalized and secure sites.

Although long-duration and high-load stress testing is Application Center Test's main purpose, the programmable dynamic tests will also be useful for functional testing.

Application Center Test is compatible with all Web servers and Web applications that adhere to the HTTP protocol.

ATC Functional testing Documents

ATC functional test is used to determine the proper functioning of the pages. By using ATC functional test you can specify the dependency of one page to another. It has got two scripting language.

1. VB Script
2. J Script

Through these scripting languages you can specify your own logic for page browsing. Basically Application test center provide different way to call web page by specifying its URL.

Through this you can assure that every page is working fine. Suppose in case if your page is getting some error while rendering on the browser than it gives you all the details of error. Application test center also generate report for successful test.

How you do that?

First of all you have to create a new test project using Microsoft Application Test center and than you can specify your test case.

For testing a particular URL you can create test case in Microsoft Application Test Center. There are two options available.

1. Create an empty test.
2. Record a new Test.

Creating an empty test

Create empty test option creates a test file using default content and setting. After selecting empty test you can choose language to create test logic. There are two options for programming language.

1. VB Script
2. J Script

after selecting script language you can give any name to the test. When you create an empty test case it automatically generate one liner code.

Test.SendRequest ("http://localhost")

For writing your own test case you can change the code and you can mention your own URL for testing.

You can now set properties for Test by property window of Test. You can pop up property window of test case by either right clicking on that test and selecting properties Or by directly clicking on property tool of tool bar.



Through this you can specify the number of users, number of simultaneous browser, Performance counter, number of times and test time duration etc.

After creating test and fixing all properties you can run test by using run tool in the tool bar.



It generate report for your test by default it store the report in the installation directory's ACTTrace.txt you can modify that path by project properties.

For each test run it generate the test result and stores in Result section of the project. 

Application Center Test

Overview: Summary

Test Name:  ACTReal: Emptytest
Test Run Name:  Report-Emptytest-April 07, 2005 15-20-34
Test Started:  04/07/2005 10:22:32 AM
Test Duration:  00:00:05:00
Test Iterations:  34,028
Test Notes:  -

Properties 

Test type:  Dynamic
Simultaneous browser connections:  1   
Warm up time (secs):  0   
Test duration:  00:00:05:00   
Test iterations:  34,028   
Detailed test results generated:  Yes   

Summary      

Total number of requests:  34,029   
Total number of connections:  34,028   
Average requests per second:  113.43   
Average time to first byte (msecs):  5.74   
Average time to last byte (msecs):  5.94   
Average time to last byte per iteration (msecs):  5.94  
Number of unique requests made in test:  1   
Number of unique response codes:  1   

Errors Counts      

HTTP:  0   
DNS:  0   
Socket:  0   

Additional Network Statistics      

Average bandwidth (bytes/sec):  619,894.95   
Number of bytes sent (bytes):  11,842,092   
Number of bytes received (bytes):  174,126,393   
Average rate of sent bytes (bytes/sec):  39,473.64
Average rate of received bytes (bytes/sec):  580,421.31
Number of connection errors:  0   
Number of send errors:  0   
Number of receive errors:  0   
Number of timeout errors:  0   

Response Codes      

Response Code: 200 - The request completed successfully. 
Count:  34,029       
Percent (%):  100.00       

The Test Result give you detail report of test. 

Record a new test 

Record a new test basically create new test by recording a web browsing session. 

New test is slightly different from empty test. It automatically sends request is slightly different for this you have to click on start recording to create new test. It creates different request to the server and creates automated script for that.
You can press stop recording to limit the number of test request. Rest of the test procedure is same as empty test but in record test you can specify your own logic by modifying the auto-generated test by application test center. 

Conclusions

Microsoft application test center is a power tool for performing functional as well as performance testing of your web site. It makes your job easy by auto generating test. It has also got lot of functionality, which provides an easy way to perform functional testing of your site.

It comes with Microsoft visual studio .NET.