Load Testing a SOAP Web Service

This tutorial provides a brief introduction to the AppPerfect Load Test product using a set of hands-on practice exercises. This tutorial assumes you have successfully downloaded and installed AppPerfect Load Test on your machine with the default options.

This document is divided into following sections

1. Creating Project
• Exercise 1: Launch AppPerfect Load Test
• Exercise 2: Creating a Project
2. AppPerfect Load Test
• Exercise 1: Define a Load Test project
• Exercise 2: Recording a SOAP task
• Exercise 3: Executing a test
• Exercise 4: View and analyze result

Within each section, multiple exercises are listed. Each exercise forms a logical unit which is expected to take no more than a few minutes to perform. This tutorial will use GlobalWeather webservice.

This tutorial is not intended as a comprehensive training guide. Please refer to the product documentation for detailed information. However, this tutorial will give you a very good overview of the products and substantially improve your productivity with the product.

Creating Project

Exercise 1: Launch AppPerfect Load Test

1. Click on Start -> Programs ->AppPerfect Load Test x.x.x -> AppPerfect Load Test
2. On launching AppPerfect Load Test a Welcome page will be displayed. Go through the brief description given for product.
   NB: Welcome page is displayed only when Load Test x.x.x is launched and last time no project was opened.

Exercise 2: Creating a Project

1. Launch the Project Wizard by clicking File ->New... menu option. The New Project wizard will be launched.
2. Keep the default project name and location for the purpose of this exercise. Click on the OK button.
3. A confirmation message saying that the project is saved will be displayed. Click on the OK button.

Now using this project we will create tests to demonstrate the functionality of AppPerfect Load Test product.

AppPerfect Load Test

Please follow the steps provided in the "Creating Project" section to first create a project, then proceed further.

Exercise 1: Define a Load Test project

1. Once the project is successfully created another dialog - Define Project Properties dialog - will be displayed.
2. Keep the default settings as shown in this dialog i.e., Test Duration:1min, Load Type:Burst, Virtual Users:10.
3. Go through the description given for Burst load type at the bottom.
4. Review other settings in the Panel and click on the Finish button to close this dialog.
5. Click through all the menu items to familiarize yourself with the available features and how to access them. Viewing through all menu items will give a reasonable overview of the application.
6. Click Help -> Table of Contents menu item to see AppPerfect Load Test product documentation
7. Open the Preferences dialog by selecting the menu option Tools -> Options...
8. Review the default settings for Load Test and click the OK button to close the dialog.

Exercise 2: Recording a SOAP task

1. Right click on project and Add group. Provide the group name (using ActionGroup1 here), repeat count and select Group type as SOAP.
2. Keep the default settings in Group Details.
3. Right click on ActionGroup1, Add a task. Provide WSDL File/URL as "http://www.webservicex.com/globalweather.asmx?wsdl" and click on Load WSDL.
4. The remaining fields will be populated on loading the WSDL. Click OK.
5. Review that Task fields inside ActionGroup1 are populated according to the WSDL file.
6. Select task Task2 [GlobalWeatherSoap.GetCitiesByCountry]. In Parameters tab, select the parameter CountryName and click on edit icon beside the Parameters table to provide value as "United States".
7. Similarly, parameters can be configured for Task1 [GlobalWeatherSoap.GetWeather].
8. To verify the test, Click Project -> Verify Test using Browser.

Exercise 3: Executing a test

1. To execute the test, click on Project -> Run from the menubar.
2. The focus will be shifted to Status tab. Here the current status of the test execution will be displayed. Various test metrics such as response time, virtual user count, etc. are continuously refreshed in the charts.
3. The test will run for 1 minute as specified when project was created.

Exercise 4: View and analyze result

1. Once the test is completed, the test results will be displayed in the "Results" tab and result summary data is displayed in the main window on the right.
2. Since no error was detected during our test execution, the result of our test execution was "Successful". Additional details about hit count, etc. is also displayed.
3. View various result summaries by clicking on the items in the tree on the left in the Results tab