Find Out How

Play Modes

SOASTA CloudTest play modes provide "recommended" settings for both functional (General) and load (Load) testing. General settings provide verbose logging settings that come at a low-overhead in smaller, or functional, tests. Load settings omit verbose logging for all but the test composition object. For load testing, and in some other cases, verbose mode may be a lot more information than is useful for the test.

To select a Play Mode:

1. In the Composition Editor, click the Play Mode drop-down to select between General and Load settings.

The General play mode provides the following settings:

• Save Results checked with Force Garbage Collection unchecked and no Event Count Limit. Both Save Clip Element Details and Save Composition Element Details are checked.
• For all logging objects, Verbose.

Note: Check Preview Mode to stage the test, but not send any messages. This can be useful when setting up tests for multiple Maestros and/or Results Services. The default for the Composition Editor’s Preview Mode in both "General" and "Load" modes is FALSE.

The Load play mode provides the following settings:

• Save Results and Force Garbage Collection checked and no Event Count Limit. Both Save Clip Element Details and Save Composition Element Details are unchecked.
• For Test Composition, Verbose.
• For all logging objects, None.

Note: The default for the Composition Editor’s Preview Mode in both "General" and "Load" modes is FALSE.

To Specify a Custom Play Mode

1. With your test open in the Composition Editor, click the Properties tab in the lower toolbar. The General tab displays in the sub-pane on the right.

2. To use custom settings, first check the Edit Advanced Settings box. Once this box is checked any of the General tab settings can be modified. Changing a setting causes "Custom" to appear as the selection in both the Play Mode drop-down of the Properties > General tab and in the Play Mode drop-down on the toolbar above.

Both Composition Element and Clip Element results can be separately logged in the Composition Editor, Properties, General tab. This ability to customize component-level results logging leads to significant SOASTA CloudTest performance improvements on both the server and client side, while preserving access to crucial analysis data that you want.

• Uncheck either Save Composition Element Details to turn off logging details for bands, tracks, and other composition elements; or uncheck Save Clip Element Details to turn off logging details for chains, delays, and other clip elements. Once a setting is changed, Play Mode switches to Custom.

With Edit Advanced Settings checked, you can revise any of the Logging settings in the right portion of the General tab. SOASTA CloudTest's General play mode provides default verbose logging of all its activities that is quite detailed, and in most cases, provides valuable information for little cost.

These component-level settings control how much information is logged to the result object for each category of information presented. Use the Change All button to change all logging settings to the specified drop-down setting.

For example, setting the script level to Info means that, for scripts, all logging of type Info and above (Error, Statistics, and Info) is enabled, while all logging of type Verbose is disabled.