Appendix B. Getting Started with Application Center Test

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Application Center Test (ACT) is a powerful new tool that ships with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Edition (Developer and Architect). You use it to create and run performance tests against Web applications. Those of you who are familiar with the history of Microsoft performance tools might have encountered the Web Application Stress (WAS) tool. ACT is a follow-up product to WAS. The WAS tool was useful because it allowed a user to record a test scenario by simply navigating a Web site. This made it possible to create and run simple performance tests. But WAS tended to fall short when you needed more advanced testing behavior. ACT continues in the tradition of making test creation easy while adding significant new functionality that removes many of the limitations of WAS.

Note

ACT is not a standalone product. It ships with Microsoft Visual Studio Enterprise Edition (Developer and Architect) and cannot be obtained in any other way. This is in contrast to WAS, which was, and still is, available for free on the MSDN Web site.


The heart of ACT is the Active Test Script (ATS) Object Model. All recorded tests are translated into a set of Visual Basic Script (VBS) methods , which you can then customize to your heart's content. You can record scripts that will ­produce tests written in VBS, or you can create your own scripts from scratch in VBS or JScript. The recording process does so much for you that you're unlikely to use JScript to develop your tests. (Why create more work for yourself?)

Because the ACT tests use a script engine, you gain a great deal of flexibility. ACT effectively lifts most functional limitations on the capabilities of your test scripts. You can, for example, create COM objects and additional utilities all from within ACT. This essentially enables you to develop tests that can serve a functional purpose as well as test for performance and stress. You can use ACT to test all sorts of Web applications, from straight HTML to ASP.NET and from Web Forms to Web services. As long as what you want to test talks HTTP, ACT can do the job.

This appendix introduces the ACT application and offers some common, helpful methods that you might want to use in your own ACT tests. The appendix concludes with a quick reference to the ACT Test Object Model.

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Designing Enterprise Applications with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET
Designing Enterprise Applications with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (Pro-Developer)
ISBN: 073561721X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 103

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