An Overview of ACT

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Once you install ACT with Visual Studio .NET, you can use it in two different ways. ACT is provided as a standalone application, under the Visual Studio .NET Programs folder, and you can also use it from within Visual Studio .NET. You can create an ACT project in Visual Studio .NET ”you save it in the Application Center Test Projects folder, as shown in the New Project dialog box in Figure B-1 ”and you can add an existing ACT project to a Visual Studio .NET solution. It is really very flexible. For the most part, I'll focus on using ACT as a standalone application. You can figure out for yourself how to use it in Visual Studio .NET ”there's not much to it.

Figure B-1. Creating a new ACT project in Visual Studio .NET.

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Using the Standalone Version of ACT

The standalone version of ACT offers by far the most flexibility. (See Figure B-2.) The interface is clean and uncluttered, and the application itself is designed using an Explorer metaphor. On the left is a tree view that displays the current project name , all tests contained within the project, and the results node. To the right is the content area.

Figure B-2. The standalone version of ACT.

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You can select nodes in the tree to view the results, test contents ( essentially the script code), and test results. You can view the test properties by selecting a node and clicking the Properties toolbar button (or by right-clicking the node and choosing Properties from the shortcut menu). Figure B-3 shows some of the settings that you can manipulate through the Properties window. These are all common settings that you can probably figure out for yourself.

Figure B-3. The ACT Test Properties window.

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To create a new test, you click the New Test toolbar button to start a wizard (shown in Figure B-4) that allows you to create a blank test or a recorded test. You'll generally want to select a recorded test because starting from scratch is usually too painful. Recording a test is simple. You'll be presented with a dialog box that has a Start Recording button. Clicking this button causes a blank Microsoft Internet Explorer browser window to appear. Type the URL for the site you want to test, and you're off. All you need to do is navigate to the areas of interest, play around with the pages as necessary ( mainly to test the features you're interested in), and then close the browser. The recording dialog box will still be there waiting for you, but you'll notice that the text box containing the request details will have a bunch of entries in it. Click Stop Recording and continue with the wizard ”the only thing left to do is name the test.

Figure B-4. The ACT New Test Wizard.

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When you finish with the New Test Wizard, ACT will open your new test and display it in the content window (as shown in Figure B-5). You'll see the script code in the larger panel and a spot where you can provide descriptive information about your test (a notes field). This is the typical view you'll have when you view and edit tests from within ACT ”it's a notepad-like editing experience.

Figure B-5. What your new ACT test might look like.

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Note

If you want a little more in the way of editing help, you can add the ACT project to a Visual Studio .NET solution. You can then edit the test file in the IDE, which has much more sophisticated editing features (but, alas, no IntelliSense).


After you create a new test, you might want to rerun it to make sure it really works. Select your new test in the tree view and click the Start toolbar button. You'll see the dialog box similar to the one shown in Figure B-6. If you don't see the graph, click the Show Details button. This particular graph is really impressive ”it allows you to watch the performance of your site in real time. It's also fun to see what happens when you start making changes to your application while the test is running. (You can really make the requests -per-second (RPS) graph jump around.)

Figure B-6. The Test Status dialog box with a real-time graph.

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Once the test has completed, you'll definitely want to check out the results. ACT makes this easy. Select the Results node in the tree to bring up the results viewer in the content window (as shown in Figure B-7). From here, you can look at all of the results from all of the tests run within your project. ACT provides a number of graphs and other ways to view the results (from an overall set of test statistics all the way down to the individual request level). ACT allows you to combine graphs across different reports for the same test. This is helpful when you're trying to gauge the effect of code changes to your application.

Figure B-7. The ACT Results view.

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For more information, consult the documentation provided with ACT. There's a lot of good information there.

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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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