Tools

Universal Testing Tool

For the purpose of realistic simulation of end-user behavior and its impact upon the System work load, Devexperts has developed a software solution of its own called Universal Testing Tool (UTT). No equivalent tool is currently available on the market.

UTT is a small but flexible application which allows creating, controlling, and analyzing the interaction between virtual users and the system. Appropriate tasks are effectively distributed between Performance Analysis Team (creating a proper end-user behaviour model) and Development team (implementing functional business logic for the UTT part responsible for user emulation (AutoClient).

Support of any communication protocols

UTT implements an internal API used for communication between AutoClient which emulates the working client, and the controlling part. This allows to maintain the application and the AutoClient by independent teams. Thus, the functionality of the AutoClient is not bound to a single specific protocol, and can implement any data transmission method, corresponding to the one client application uses. The support is limited only to four existing communication models between the client and the server, including RPC (Remote Procedure Call), RMI (Remote Method Invocation), MOM (Message Oriented Middleware), and Streaming Data.

Business logic

An essential part of user behaviour emulation is the internal logic which is utilized for event processing. Most performance testing software solutions currently available on the market do not allow to use complex mechanism of interaction with the server part of the system, being limited to incoming events processing only. The AutoClients developed by Devexperts implement the operational logic of real application, selecting when necessary relevant data from internal storages similar to those the user is interacting with. An example of such behaviour can be issuing a random order using available to every user individual list of instruments.

Load distribution

Distributed systems often require performance testing using load which cannot be generated by means of several available workstations or servers, as it may require significant hardware resources or working with resources located in different regions.

UTT is designed with a view to fast and efficient load control in an environment where load is generated by many computers at the same time. The application can automatically select appropriate proportions for machines with different hardware configuration. That is why Devexperts specialists have easily adopted to use with UTT fast growing services of providing hardware resources also known as Computing Clouds. UTT is able to manage over 500,000 concurrent users simultaneously working with the System. Still complexity generating and controlling such load is as easy as controlling 5,000 users of; as for time consumption, the difference is only in time required to start of the operating system on a necessary quantity of servers.