What's New for Web Performance and Load Testing

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate includes new functionality for Web performance tests and load tests.

New Web performance test features in Visual Studio Ultimate:

Feature

Associated topics and comments

Features that make it easier to fix a failed Web performance test playback:

Extensible recorder plug-ins for modifying recorded Web performance tests (including adding custom dynamic parameter correlation)

Find has been added to the Web Performance Test Results Viewer

View recording log has been added to the Web Performance Test Results Viewer

Jump to request has been added to the Web Performance Test Results Viewer

Add extraction rule has been added to the Web Performance Test Results viewer

Web performance test result is now in a separate file for better scalability

New API for Web performance test result

New extensibility API enables UI extensions to Web Performance Test Results Viewer

New API to add custom Web Test Post Body Editor

Web Performance tests can now handle binary post bodies

File Upload record/playback enhancements:

Uploaded file added to project and deployed

If the actions while using the Web Performance Test Recorder include a file upload, such as uploading a file to Microsoft SharePoint, the file will automatically be added to your project, and marked as a deployment item.

Option for generating a unique file name on each iteration

Additional new Web performance test features:

Looping and branching in Web performance test

New Request Details dialog box for editing think times, goals, reporting string across all requests in the Web Performance Test Editor

New validation and extraction rules for inner text and select tags

Test level validation rule for pages meeting response time goal

New Load Test features in Visual Studio Ultimate:

There are several new features for load testing in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. For example, the new Virtual User Activity Chart shown in the following illustration lets you see the virtual user activity that is associated with your load test after it has completed running and is opened from the Load Test Analyzer. Each row in the chart represents an individual virtual user. The Virtual User Activity Chart shows you exactly what each virtual user was executing during the test. This lets you see patterns of user activity, load patterns, correlate failed or slow tests, and see requests with other virtual user activity. The Virtual User Activity Chart is available only after the load test has finished running.

Virtual User Activity Chart

Virtual User Activity Chart

The following table lists the new load test functionality that is included in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.

Feature

Associated topics

Logging and data collection improvements:

Log entire test result on test failure or log entire result every n requests.

Remote profiler integration

Event Log Data Collection

Extensible data collectors to support more platforms

Analysis Improvements:

Load test virtual user activity visualization using the Virtual User Activity Chart (see preceding illustration)

New statistics are collected for performance measurements: 99th percentile and Standard Deviation

New counters and thresholds in counter sets

Computer Tags for identifying machines for counter collection

Microsoft Excel reporting:

Run to run performance and trend analysis reports in Microsoft Excel

Performance testing enhancements:

Run automated UI tests as performance tests

True network emulation

More flexible load test modeling:

New sequential test mix model

Delay start on scenario

Specify test iteration counts for scenarios

Select which agent(s) to run the scenario on

Disable during warm up

Additional new load test features:

Multiple load test plug-ins

64 bit test execution

See Also

Reference

What's New for Testing

Concepts

Testing Application Performance and Stress