In my efforts to test the performance of one of the applications around my office, I came across an open-source tool: JMeter. Well, a co-worker stumbled upon it and we started to explore its use. It turns out to be a fairly useful tool, though not as extensible as your LoadRunner’s and QALoad’s. Of all the tools I have used in the past, I’d closely relate it Microsoft’s ACT.

Anyway, it has many useful applications such as proxy recording, multi-threaded scripts, remote script execution and the like. What I liked about it the most, however, was the ability to execute JUnit test scripts on a large scale. This allowed us to execute a 30-user test on a Swing desktop application and capture some rudimentary timing data. The downside is that we had to manually copy the JUnit tests to each of the test machines… and use 30 seperate machines, but I feel that was a limitation of the application under test, not JMeter.

So if you are looking for a decent tool to test your web application performance, I’d suggest giving JMeter a shot.  

http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/

I recently had the pleasure of evaluating Quality Center 9.0. Our department uses QuickTest Pro 8.2 for our automation suite and have used Quality Center extensively for managing and maintaining our scripts. I installed the QC Connectivity add-in and the QTP for QualityCenter Add-in and proceeded to test out the demonstration system. Well, I quickly noticed that we were unable to get a list of projects from Quality Center when connecting from QTP. I took the time to read through the documentation… found nothing. It was time to contact support… and the response was as follows:

When connecting to Quality Center 9.0 from previous version of testing tools (WinRunner 8.2, QuickTest Professional 8.2.1, LoadRunner 8.0 Athena, or earlier), the “Failed create list of projects” error message displays. This is due to the new login method introduced in Quality Center 9.0.

Workaround: In the Site Configuration tab in Site Administration, add the parameter BACKWARD_SUPPORT_ALL_DOMAINS_PROJECTS and set its value to “Y”.

This solved our issue… let the evaluation continue.

I have to say that it’s rare I find something that intrigues me in the gaming world by title alone. However, I have just been pointed to a game that does just that. I bring you:

Ninja Loves Pirate

Here’s the synopsis of the game, from what I can tell… you control a ninja or a pirate in a battle of the ages against zombies and robots. How awesome is that???  Plus, it takes me back to a golden age of gaming where the 16-bit side-scrollers were king. But that is just me…

Anyway, give it a look — it should entertain you to say the least.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have seen an increase of searches pertaining to TestDirector/Quality Center and blank pages. I’ve addressed this at one point with a TestDirector post last year. However, there are a few other things I have tried in order to fix this.

Let me first put out this disclaimer, these are steps that I have followed and I do not guarantee this will work for you and this advice is provided as-is. Proceed at your own risk. Now with that out of the way…

If you log into your Quality Center (QC) or TestDirector (TD) site and are greeted with a blank page, chances are, your local installation has been compromised. At least, that’s been the case for me. With earlier versions of TD, I’ve found that uninstalling your local copy of the ActiveX controls, removing the Spider.OCX file, and launching the TD site again has proven effective at getting back into TD.

With the onset of QC, I’ve noticed that the uninstallation package is not readily available. What I’ve tried however, is to manually delete the local copy of the QC interface. This is typically found at the following location: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Mercury Interactive\. Within this folder, there will be one or more of the following directories: TD2000, TD2000_80, and TDAPIClient. On my machine, I deleted all three of these folders and then launched the QC site again. QC detected that I did not have the current installation and reinstalled the interface; allowing me to again access the application.

I hope you find this useful.

If you are in the Birmingham area, check out Birmingham’s TechWalk. This is the 2nd annual Tech Walk in dwntown Birmingham in which technology is used within a large scale Urban game of Reversi (or Othello, for those of you in the know). Anyway, check it out, it is a fun time and takes place during the Arts festival downtown this year. If I can track down some photos, I will, but until then — check’em out.

Once again, another incredibly useful post from the smart folks over at mental_floss. As many of you know, I watch gas prices like I do the stock market… you know, watching the volatile prices shift and not ever really knowing why, but consistently getting upset by the rising costs.

Regardless, they’ve posted some tips on how to make the most of your gasoline dollar.

Read more here: mental_floss blog : Save at the Pumps 

This week, Bosco mounts an offensive against his dreaded foe, the ladder.

I present to you: “Bosco versus the Ladder”