Performance Testing Using Microsoft Application Center Test

The ACT tool is for stress testing ASP.NET applications and for analyzing performance and scalability problems. ACT ships with Visual Studio .NET Enterprise and Architect editions. The tool allows you to observe the behavior of your application under various loads and to watch how performance metrics change as the application comes under increasing stress. ACT provides the following useful features:

Simulation: The tool simulates a large number of concurrent users each making multiple requests .
Support for authentication schemes: The tool supports several different authentication schemes and the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, making it applicable to a wide range of ASP.NET applications.
Integrates with Performance Monitor: The tool allows you to select monitoring counters from the same set of Performance objects used by the Performance Monitor utility.
Scripts: The tool allows you to create and record scripts that simulate a user 's behavior on an application. The scripts are generated in VBScript, and ACT provides an API for customizing existing test scripts.
Reports : The tool generates reports showing the progress of the test, including running values of the selected performance counters and graphs.

Figure 1-8 shows the ACT tool interface with the results of a recent performance test.

Figure 1-8: The ACT user interface

Chapter 8, "Debugging and Tracing ASP.NET Applications," discusses the ACT tool in detail. It discusses how to configure the tool for testing an application, plus how to generate reports and interpret the results. For now, understand that the ACT tool is an important part of the iterative cycle of testing and optimization that your ASP.NET application needs to undergo before it can be released to users.