This post is for all those that attended my talk at CASTx17 in Sydney (and of course for anyone else that cares). It just contains all the details for the tools and links I talked about.
Tag Archives: tools
JMeter and WSSE
WSSE signing and/or encryption has always been an issue no-matter what tool you use. One of the reasons for the ongoing success of SoapUI as that does it magically somehow. 😉
Thankfully my colleague Till Neunast has now written a wrapper that allows you to use WSSE with JMeter. Just install and away you go (nearly). It is really no less complex than the SoapUI variant. It is still early days and should be treated with caution(!!) and I can imagine there still being some change to the project but it’s a very good start and a long awaited reprieve from the personal hell that WSSE has been in the past. So excuse me for being a bit overexcited.
If you do end up using the plugin please feed back any issues or improvements to the project or Till for that matter.
To download please see here:
https://github.com/tilln/jmeter-wssecurity
by
Oliver Erlewein
My Daily Tool Use [Updated #2]
As a performance tester I spend most of my daily time somewhere between the browser and a web server. I also so spend a lot of time on servers themselves analysing data. So I thought I’d write a bit about the tool landscape I tend to use. In my tool selection I favour Open Source software. Mainly because I don’t have to fluff around with licenses but also because I can look at code if I need to. It allows me to focus my resources on training people. I do tend to feed back into OSS, whenever I can (which is seldom as I am usually not that clever;-) ).
I also do a lot of bespoke programming to automate processes. This is not at the level a developer would do things but more on a simple scripting level. But not to be underestimated what power this can unleash in your day to day work.
Controlling JMeter ThreadGroups with -1
When I script large JMeter projects I immediately default to run scripts through config files. That means that all sorts of variables get pre loaded at the start of the test (VariablesFromCSV is a huge help!). From there I control things like URLs, usernames and passwords,… but I also control Thread Groups. Recently I came across the issue that I wanted to switch in such a config file between a test that ran for a certain length of time to a test that ran only X number of iterations.
For all of you that have used JMeter you know that that might be an issue.
JMeter WebDriver Issue with Closing Browser
I have been playing a bit with using WebDriver (Jmeter-plugins) from within JMeter. Usually something I abhorr but it does have the occasionto do was restarting the browser (Firefox) every thread loop. This ended up in a failure every time it tried to close the browser.
A simple JMeter Execution Framework
For years I have been thinking of open sourcing the work I do. I see the Blog here as a simple part of that effort. The main -selfish- reason though is, so I don’t have to carry code around from A to B and I can safeguard it from someone claiming it as their own (even me). Open sourcing is something easier said than done. Especially if things are over a certain size and the things I do are usually very tailored to the project context, which makes it difficult to generalise.
But… all things have to start small. I have released WinMinoTaur on GitHub today. These are just some small Windows batch files but they make test execution life with JMeter a bit easier. You no longer depend on the UI to execute tests.
Every Tester is a Performance Tester
…at least to some degree. Well, there are human conditions that distort the perception of time but it’s highly unlikely that you’re one of them. So you are a performance tester too.
The biggest annoyance for a performance tester is to get code into a performance environment that CLEARLY has issues that can be detected by the simplest means available (well.. second most annoying, as finding obvious functional defects is even worse). This is where you as a (whatever kind of) tester come in.
You know the times you drum your fingers on the desk waiting for that spinning wheel in the browser to come back? The batch job where the execution is exactly “making one cup of coffee” long? The usual response from you would be to shrug and say something like “This is just the environment. It’s system test afterall.” or “Let performance testing take care of it”.
Now, I can totally relate to such sentiments! We’re all busy and have deadlines to meet. I’d make the case though that you’d actually help the project as a whole and thereby yourself too by not ignoring such issues.
Write a file from a JMeter Script
This is somewhat of a strange post here but it’s something I need to remember how to do and because it was hard to find. So if you’re not into JMeter please move on, there’s nothing to see here!
Sikuli – for all those hard to reach places!
Ever had the scenario in automated testing, that you had something to automate that really didn’t fit any of your tools? Something that was as bristly as an Echidnea?
Normally I try and steer away from anything that doesn’t use standard protocols and/or interfaces. Things like Flash, Silverlight and others. Not that there aren’t test tools that handle these things but it’s just that it’s messy to say the least. For open standards like HTML or SOAP there are gazillions of ways to automate.
So I got surprised by having to test an application on -or should I rather say through- Citrix.
Web Page Analysis Basics for Testers
I usually move in the performance testing realm and one of the things I regularly do, is check for obvious omissions in website design before I get into the low down with testing.
What do I mean by that?
There is such a thing as (and I am having difficulty writing this) Best Practice, when it comes to web page development. These are technological imperatives that can be easily checked by using simple tools. You don’t need to be an HTML guru to use these or to gain more knowledge about your website under test.
Hello Test World 