In the tradition of the Wednesday Bosco Siting, there’s a special post out pertaining to our feline friends, courtesy of the mental_floss blogs. They never cease to provide useful, if not interesting, information.

Hello, Kitty

And here I thought Bosco was just going nuts at 9:00pm every evening. Turns out, he’s honing his attack skills. Maybe I should be afraid…

This Wednesday, Bosco is found guarding his catnip box.

I present to you: “Bosco En Gaurd.”

I’ve been frequenting the blog at www.lifehacker.com and they continually expose interesting nooks and crannies out on the internet. Today, they’ve posted on the Mile Per Dollar calculator. I, for one, find this really cool so I can determine exactly how much it costs to get to work. Ok, so I’d just go nuts and determine how much my trips to visit my family will cost me, but still cool.

Anyway, here’s the link: Miles Per Dollar Calculator
And the Lifehacker post: LifeHacker

In my earlier post about Planets, I stated that it looked as though our solar system would gain three additional planets. I guess I spoke too soon. Apparently, scientists have agreed to demote Pluto to the status of “dwarf planet” thus removing it from the canon of recognized planetoids. Oh yeah… and the other three I mentioned (Ceres, Charon, and Xena)… not planets. (cry)

Let’s pour one out for our fallen celestial comrade…

According to Mercury support, when executing QTP scripts with LoadRunner, you onlyneed an installation of the QTP tool and any required add-ins on the load generating machine. You will not need the license for the tool, as the GUI VUser licenses within the LoadRunner Generator will be used as the license for the tool.

According to my discussions with Mercury’s Technical Support, there are several limitations that LoadRunner has when executing QuickTest Pro scripts. Apparently, your QTP Scripts cannot:

• access external files.
• use external libraries.
• have reusable actions.
• use shared libraries.
• reference reusable actions in other scripts.

The general rule of thumb that the tech support agent suggested was to ensure that you have all referenced code inside the script directory. This is to ensure that LoadRunner passes everything required of the test to each Load Generating machine.

I have spent some considerable time on the phone with Mercury Tech Support regarding performance testing a Java Swing application. One approach we have successfully proven was utilizing QuickTest Pro to exercise our application while generated load through LoadRunner.

Here are some important details that I have gleaned:

• It will be necessary to obtain GUI VUser licenses for the LoadRunner Controller to execute the scripts.
• You will need to install QuickTest Pro (and necessary plugins) on each machine needed to exercise the application.
• Your QTP scripts will need to implement transations around each business process to capture timing data.

• Services.StartTransaction “Name”
• Services.EndTransaction “Name”

 This is some preliminary information. I will post more as I learn it.

Edit:

I also learned that load generating machines need to have the following application installed in order for the LoadRunner Controller to communicate and execute the QTP scripts on a destination machine. You must have the application under test (AUT) installed or accessible, an installation of QuickTest Pro (an required plug ins), and the LoadRunner Agent Process installed and running.

In cases of having multiple terminal Services sessions, you must have the LoadRunner Agent Process running on each session and refer to each session as a seperate Load Generating machine in the controller. I believe you reference each instance as MachineName:0, MachineName:1, etc. Please correct me, if I am wrong here.

If you’ve stumbled upon this site due to the insistence of Hank Bowman, I encourage you to link to the ‘Tech’ tag that I’ve available. I’ll consider creating an RSS feed solely for this category as well and I’ll attempt to start posting some more QA and tech related posts for your viewing pleasure.

As always, if you’ve a question, drop me a line and I will do my best to answer your query.

Hey — Remember that Texas Hold’Em for XBOX Live Arcade was released today. It will be free for the first 48 hours… which I think means you have to grab it by Midnight August 24th. After that — normal charges apply.

This week, we find Bosco sprawling out on the floor attempting to subdue the camera.

I present to you: “Bosco En Masse”