Test anytime, anywhere. SOASTA Concerto enables your team to easily access your testing environment from across campus or across the world. SOASTA Concerto runs on any computer that has a browser and Internet connection. No need to install software…merely open your browser, log in and begin testing. It’s just that easy!
All-in-one testing. With SOASTA Concerto you can test any Web application or service, no matter how complex. No need to resort to cobbling together point products from many vendors. From functional/regression testing to load testing to performance testing to Web UI/Ajax testing—SOASTA Concerto natively supports them all. Loyal to Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari? No need to worry. SOASTA Concerto is browser independent, too. Building applications or services based on a variety of protocols? SOAP, REST, HTTP(S), HTML, Ajax, JSON, etc. You name it. We support it.
A memory-based analytic service (with persistence to disk) easily handles very large results sets and analytics from the most complex distributed tests with superior performance. The Analytic Dashboard automatically correlates many data streams from a distributed test into a single test result on a synchronized timeline providing the ability to drill down to a single event or message to find the problem.
Life’s too short for manual testing! SOASTA Concerto changes the playing field in Web testing. Its groundbreaking visual testing environment is based upon familiar, easy-to-use digital media creation tools. With an immersive, drag and drop interface, you can easily create and run complex tests within minutes, find and fix errors in real-time, and collaborate and reuse test scenarios across the testing team.
Load testing is the systematic simulation of a Web application or service in real world, expected usage conditions in order to predict system behavior, and to pinpoint/diagnose errors in an application and its infrastructure before it is deployed. It is used to analyze the following three aspects of an application’s quality of service:
SOASTA advocates a six-step methodology for creating and executing load tests against Web applications and services.
Load testing for Web applications has been in the news quite a bit over the last year as many prominent corporations have publicly reported serious performance problems and service outages in their customer facing Web applications. We will see a lot more of this type of news reporting and here’s why. Enterprises are not testing their systems to anything like the level of quality and coverage that is needed today. The architecture of enterprise software has permanently changed. The Internet has become the primary delivery channel for enterprise and consumer applications and the volume of users and the complexity of these systems requires a lot more testing—and it isn’t happening yet.
Ten years ago, self-service applications (i.e. online banking, filing of taxes, ordering products, reporting problems), were delivered through call centers. The challenge was to build an application to support the thousands of call center representatives. Response times were considered “pretty good” if the average response was less than 20 seconds. Today, all of us are being trained by the best sites on the Internet to expect far better response times. Four seconds or less is now the requirement.
The results are in. Your customers want to use the Internet as their primary connection to you. They vastly prefer the self-service model to any other, and they are expecting you to serve them well through your Web applications. The numbers are staggering and are going to get much bigger every year. The win for the enterprise is that it is far less expensive to support your customers over the Internet than any other way. The win for the customer is that they do not have to talk to anyone to get what they want. But only if you serve them well—expectations about performance, user experience, and quality are extremely high.
The challenge to IT is very real.
Support hundreds of thousands of end users instead of only thousands. Deliver applications with four second or less browser response times even at peak. These are your real customers, and they will vote with their business if they are not satisfied with the user experience delivered to them over the Web.
Do it with a more complex system architecture than the really stable client/server architecture you have. More points of failure, higher volumes, less sophisticated, and less patient users. Do it with the headcount you have or with less. Deliver and the savings to your enterprise are immense. Fail to deliver and make the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
SOASTA was founded to help corporations of all sizes around the world test their Web applications. The sBox Load Testing Appliance combines the SOASTA Concerto™ Web testing application with a dedicated hardware platform to provide organizations of all sizes worldwide with a distributed, turnkey solution to load test every layer of a Web application. With sBox, you can ensure even your most complex Web applications perform the functions that they were designed for in a high quality, reliable manner.
"Performance testing . . . determines how fast some
aspect of a system performs under a particular
workload ...
It can compare two systems to find which performs better.
Or it can measure what parts of the system or workload cause the system to perform badly."
--Wikipedia
As soon as a load test fails, it immediately becomes a performance test. Performance testing is diagnostic and iterative, and answers the following questions:
SOASTA advocates a six-step methodology for creating and executing performance tests against Web applications and services.
Attacking performance problems in your Web Application requires a toolset capable of dealing with the complex infrastructure of a modern Web application. This task is supported in SOASTA Concerto using the combination of recording, resource monitoring and SOASTA Concerto’s unique integrated analytics.
Multi-tier Web architectures utilize a loosely coupled environment where many separate application components work together to deliver application functions in a scalable manner. This flexibility is wonderful but introduces a great deal of complexity into performance testing.
A modern Web application’s performance can be affected by the performance of any of its components. These components can include: hardware (servers, networks, routers, load balancers and firewalls) and software (databases, Web services, Web application servers, Web servers, content management systems, caching servers, Web logging services, and the Web application itself). All of these components offer many configuration settings that can dramatically improve or dramatically degrade the performance of a Web application.
The tester’s task is to identify the components of this application that are the performance bottlenecks. This diagnostic phase is then followed by an iterative tuning phase. Changes are made to improve the performance of the component and the performance testing is repeated to determine if the changes are successful.
SOASTA Concerto’s Recording feature automates the creation of real world scenarios by recording and presenting the HTTP(S) message traffic from the target Web application. These real world scenarios can be used to discover and isolate each of the components in an end-to-end test. These isolated components can then be individually targeted to quickly determine which ones are performance bottlenecks. (Recording)
SOASTA Concerto’s Monitoring capability collects performance data from all of the components of a Web application. Agent-less and agent-based monitoring is available for every resource in a modern Web application. (Monitoring)
You collect data from any source . . . SOASTA Concerto, target servers, load balancers and network traffic. SOASTA Concerto synchronizes all of it onto a single, synchronized timeline. No manual data integration tasks! Spend all of your time analyzing the performance data in a pre-built Analytic Dashboard. (Integrated Analytics)
Great performance is no accident. performance testing needs to begin early and continue through the lifecycle of the Web application. As highlighted many times by the press in the last year, seemingly small changes to the configuration settings of a single component can have a dramatic negative impact on the end-to-end performance of a Web application. The best defense against these dramatic failures is to build performance into your Web application testing very early in the development cycle.
At the most basic level, software testing is designed to verify that an application or a part of an application behaves correctly. Modern Web applications are complex, composite applications that use messaging between loosely coupled application components to deliver application functions in a scalable manner. These components can include: hardware (servers, networks, routers, load balancers and firewalls) and software (databases, Web services, Web application servers, Web servers, content management systems, caching servers, Web logging services, and the Web application itself). The requirement demands a real world testing solution that can record, test, verify, monitor, and analyze all of the components in the Web application infrastructure.
The challenge of verifying the function of a Web application is very real. SOASTA Concerto delivers a complete, professional, and affordable Web testing solution that supports the functional testing of every component of a Web application. Functional test suites that target Web services, Web applications via HTTP(S) and the Web UI/Ajax browser interface are quickly created using SOASTA Concerto’s unique browser-based UI.
Test scenarios can be quickly created using SOASTA Concerto’s automated HTTP(S) Recording and Browser Recording features. SOASTA Concerto’s extensive validation capabilities allow the tester to add all necessary validations to the test scenario. These scenarios can be combined (in the SOASTA Concerto Composition Editor) into complex regression tests that can be directly integrated into the software build process. Test scenarios (known as test clips in SOASTA Concerto) are test components that can be reused across all types of testing (Functional, Load, Performance and Web UI/Ajax).
Today’s software engineering environment for the Web demands the ability to test rapidly and repeatedly. This reduction in project cycle times means there is also less time for testing. The choices are to add more people for manual testing or move to a higher level of test automation. It does the organization little good to have 2-week project cycles if the testing effort cannot keep pace.
SOASTA Concerto delivers:
. . . at an affordable price that every project team can deploy.
SOASTA Concerto’s Recording feature is a unique browser-based visual tool that automates the creation of typical usage scenarios by recording and presenting the HTTP(S) message traffic from the target Web application.
SOASTA’s Automated Browser Recording feature is implemented directly in SOASTA Concerto’s browser interface. Browser recording captures the user’s browser actions (for example, Click, Type, Mouse Down, Mouse Up. Mouse Over, Select, Drag Drop, Submit, etc.) and automatically adds each action to the test clip that is being created. This capability allows fast creation of the basics of a browser UI test.
SOASTA test clips can combine a mix of browser actions and HTTP(S) messages. This capability supports the use of Web services calls to obtain data values and to validate the end result of a test. As an example, the test of a Web UI component called “Add Customer” can use this feature to validate that the database contains the correct values after an update has occurred.
SOASTA Concerto ships with extensive validation capabilities built in but there are always unique validations that require scripting. SOASTA Concerto delivers this capability to the tester using industry standard embedded JavaScript.
Much of the work in building Web UI/Ajax tests involves validations. SOASTA Concerto includes an exhaustive list of verify commands that allow all of the elements of the Web page to be validated across all of the changes in state that occur in the Web application (ie. verifyAttributeValue, verifyElementText, verifyJavascriptCondition, verifyElementPresent, verifyTextPresent, etc.).
After many years of trials and standards development, Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) based on Ajax are appearing everywhere. These Ajax-based UIs combine rich graphics, browser actions, and dynamic content using messaging events to deliver an application across the Web that combines the best of the Web and the desktop.
End users receive a richer end user experience while IT organization’s receive the ability to support a single application image from the server. Every leading software application vendor is moving rapidly to deliver new versions of their products to enable this approach. Customer-facing self-service applications seem to be the market force pushing these new applications forward. It is a big win-win. Companies save money because customers easily support themselves and are much happier with the service they do receive . . . as long as the applications work and perform.
Continuous, automated testing becomes vital. SOASTA’s strategy is to provide an automated environment for testing all the components of a modern Web application that runs across HTTP(S). With support for Web UI/Ajax, SOASTA provides complete test automation using every important Web protocol (Web UI/Ajax, SOAP, REST, XML-RPC, JSON, HTTP(S), messaging middleware and Web UI/Ajax).
No other testing vendor can match SOASTA’s combination of technology innovation with SaaS delivery (hosted and appliance) at a price point that every organization can afford to deploy.
"AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), or Ajax, is a group of inter-related Web development techniques used for creating interactive Web applications. A primary characteristic is the increased responsiveness and interactivity of Web pages. This is achieved by exchanging small amounts of data with the server "behind the scenes" so that the entire Web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user performs an action. This is intended to increase the Web page's interactivity, speed, functionality, and usability."
--Wikipedia
In June 2004, Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) had 95% share of worldwide browser usage. It was very common for web developers to build their Web sites and Web applications for Internet Explorer (IE) only. While IE remains the market leader, the picture is now very different.
By September 2007, Internet Explorer had declined to 64 percent of worldwide browser usage with the prospect of further decline now built into the expectations of the market. The introduction of full browsers on smart phones in 2007 (i.e. the Apple iPhone) has accelerated this requirement. These smart phone users are one of the world’s most affluent demographics. Your Web site must work on these devices.
SOASTA’s Automated Browser Recording is implemented directly in SOASTA Concerto’s browser interface. Browser Recording captures the user’s browser actions (for example, Click, Type, Mouse Down, Mouse Up. Mouse Over, Select, Drag Drop, Submit, etc.) and automatically adds each action to the Test Clip that is being created. This capability allows fast creation of the basics of a Browser UI test.
Much of the work in building Web UI/Ajax tests involves validations. SOASTA Concerto includes an exhaustive list of verify commands that allow all of the elements of the Web page to be validated across all of the changes in state that occur in the Web application (for example, verifyAttributeValue, verifyElementText, verifyJavascriptCondition, verifyElementPresent, verifyTextPresent, etc.).
Web UI/Ajax testing presents a special timing challenge because the HTML page is modified asynchronously. This lack of determinism is handled for the tester in SOASTA Concerto using a comprehensive set of waitFor commands. WaitForElementText, waitForElementPresent, waitForJavascriptCondition and waitForElementVisible are some examples. SOASTA Concerto’s wait commands allow the tester to gain control of test timing targeting a complex Ajax Web application.
The Output Page Elements capability allows page elements and snippets to be output to SOASTA Concerto properties for use as parameters in subsequent testing steps, or to the SOASTA Concerto Results Viewer for help in debugging a test. The SOASTA Concerto Results Viewer provides a complete archive of every event that occurred in the test.
Reusable page element locators allow users to predefine locators once for a page. These can then be reused by every tester in every test. In a complex Web UI this feature substantially improves the experience of creating a test.
The SOASTA Concerto Composition Editor supports the ability to run Web UI/Ajax tests in parallel thereby dramatically reducing testing time.
SOASTA test clips can combine a mix of browser actions and HTTP(s) messages. This capability supports the use of Web services calls to obtain data values and to validate the end result of a test. As an example, the test of a Web UI component called Add Customer can use this feature to validate that the database contains the correct values after an update has occurred.
Browser action tests are executed using the SOASTA Concerto Conductor. A single test can use multiple Conductors and those Conductors can be installed on computers distributed across the Internet. Each Conductor can run multiple browser sessions simultaneously. This architecture allows Web UI/Ajax testing to be scaled to many, many simultaneous browser sessions.
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©2008 SOASTA, Inc
