How to: Specify the Timing Details Storage Property for a Load Test Run Setting

  • Article

After you create your load test with the New Load Test Wizard, you can use the Load Test Editor to change the scenarios properties to meet your testing needs and goals. For more information, see Creating Load Tests Using the New Load Test Wizard.

Note

For a complete list of the run settings properties and their descriptions, see Load Test Run Setting Properties.

Requirements

  • Visual Studio Ultimate

Using the Load Test Editor, you can edit a run settings Timing Details Storage property's value in the Properties window.

The Timing Details Storage property can be set to any of the following options:

  • All Individual Details: Collects and stores individual timing data for each test, transaction, and page issued during the test.

    Note

    The All Individual Details option must be selected to enable virtual user data information in your load test results. For more information, see Analyzing Load Test Virtual User Activity in the Details View of the Load Test Analyzer.

  • None: Does not collect any individual timing details. However, the average values are still available.

  • Statistics Only: Stores individual timing data, but only as percentile data. This saves space resources.

Considerations for the Timing Details Storage Property

If the Timing Details Storage property is enabled, then the time to execute each individual test, transaction, and page during the load test will be stored in the load test results repository. This allows for 90th and 95th percentile data to be shown in the Load Test Analyzer in the Tests, Transactions, and Pages tables.

If the Timing Details Storage property is enabled, by setting its value to either StatisticsOnly or AllIndividualDetails, all the individual tests, pages, and transactions are timed, and percentile data is calculated from the individual timing data. The difference is that with the StatisticsOnly option, after the percentile data has been calculated, the individual timing data is deleted from the repository. This reduces the amount of space that is required in the repository when timing details are used. However, you might want to process the timing detail data in other ways by using SQL tools, in which case the AllIndividualDetails option should be used so that the timing detail data is available for that processing. Additionally, if you set the property to AllIndividualDetails, then you can analyze the virtual user activity using the Virtual User Activity chart in the Load Test Analyzer after the load test completes running. For more information, see Analyzing Load Test Virtual User Activity in the Details View of the Load Test Analyzer.

The amount of space required in the load test results repository to store the timing details data can be very large, especially for longer running load tests. Also, the time to store this data in the load test results repository at the end of the load test is longer because this data is stored on the load test agents until the load test has finished executing, at which time the data is stored into the repository. The Timing Details Storage property is enabled by default. If this is an issue for your testing environment, you may wish to set the Timing Details Storage to None.

The timing details data is stored in the LoadTestItemResults.dat file during the run and is sent back to the controller after the load test is complete. For a load test running for a long duration, the size of the file is large. If there is not enough disk space on the agent machine, this will be an issue.

Note

In versions of Visual Studio prior to Visual Studio 2010, including Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008, the All Individual Details setting for the Timing Details Storage property was available. In Visual Studio 2010, and Visual Studio 2012, there are two important differences. First, the All Individual Details setting was not the default setting. The only way to access this information was by using SQL queries.

If you are upgrading a project from a previous version of Visual Studio load test, use the following procedure to enable full detail collection.

To configure the timing details storage property in a load test

  1. Open a load test in the load test editor.

  2. Expand the Run Settings node in the load test.

  3. Choose on the run settings that you want to configure, for example Run Settings1[Active].

  4. Open the Properties Window. On the View menu, select Properties Window.

  5. Under the Results category, choose the Timing Details Storage property and select All Individual Details.

    After you have configured the All Individual Details setting for the Timing Details Storage property, you can run your load test and view the Virtual User Activity Chart. For more information, see Running Load and Web Performance Tests and How to: Analyze What Virtual Users Are Doing During a Load Test Using the Virtual User Activity Chart.

See Also

Tasks

Walkthrough: Using the Virtual User Activity Chart to Isolate Issues

Other Resources

Analyzing Load Test Virtual User Activity in the Details View of the Load Test Analyzer