What’s new in LoadRunner 11.52 ?

On 12th June at HP Discover, I attended one of lecture sessions led by Shane Evans and Silvia Siquiera. During the presentation, they introduced the new features of LoadRunner 11.52. They started the presentation by introducing the new features that came in LoadRunner 11.50 (last year) and then highlighted the features that had been added since then.

LoadRunner 11.52 session HP Discover

 

Key new features:

  • Improved application performance (particularly VuGen startup and Analysis).
  • Integration with HP Live network. (HP Live network connects partners customers etc.)
  • Replay summary report displays detailed statistics.
  • Improved run time settings interface.
  • Can now configure round robin ramp up across load generators.
  • Integration with Visual studio and eclipse for agile CI/CD.
  • Support for Junit, nUnit and Selenium in LR scenarios.
  • LR scenarios as part of unit testing.
  • Can add performance tests as build steps in Jenkins.
  • VTS 2 is a big feature.
  • Mobile traffic recording apps for Android.*
  • New, improved proxy recording feature.
  • Shunra network virtualisation enhancements, a single load generator can now simulate different network types simultaneously e.g. some users on 3G, others on DSL etc. this removes the requirement to have a load generator for each “network type”.
  • Additional support for Linux load generators (different Linux versions).
    (This alone could be a reason to migrate to 11.52, Linux load generators can significantly reduce license costs for your test equipment).

*Whilst the new mobile recording engine is useful, I can’t help but feel that HP has scored an “own goal” in marketing terms. A number of their competitors are making lots of noise about their ability to test mobile applications and this announcement implies that HP are only just getting their act together on mobile testing. HP has been able to test mobile (and many other) applications via a proxy recorder for as long as I can remember and I’ve been using LoadRunner since 1999. This is new proxy recording engine undoubtedly makes scripting easier but it isn’t their first foray into mobile testing and their competitors are disingenuous if they try to make that claim.

Future trends
64-bit VuGen
One customer asked about whether HP had any plans for 64-bit VuGen or Load Generators. Shane Evans said that they didn’t perceive particular demand for this especially since load generators could each spawn multiple 2GB processes for load generation but that they would consider this if there was sufficient customer demand.

This question prompted a few others and one customer asked whether dcripting languages other than C were being considered. Shane said that JavaScript was being considered as a possible scripting language. This could pave the way towards using NoJS as a test engine.

Network simulation
The discussion then moved to network simulation and Shane asked the room whether people were using network simulation tools like Shunra or WANEM as part of their tests. Only 2 people in an audience of approximately 90 were using network simulation tools.

 

Diagnostics tools
Only one customer was using HP diagnostics and two or three others were using Dynatrace or other diagnostics/profiling tools like Wily Introscope. I would be very surprised if network simulation and application diagnostics weren’t significant growth areas for specialist testers in the coming years. These products add significant value to testing engagements and are becoming more important as users become more mobile and applications are increasingly hosted on virtual platforms where performance optimisation is more important.

 

VTS2 – Virtual Table Server
Shane then did a small demonstration of VTS2. I was a big advocate of the original VTS (virtual table server) and since it’s demise I’ve looked at various ways of managing test data in scripts (such as using MySQL) . VTS was always an unsupported add-on (originally written by Mercury engineers) to allow parameters to be passed from script to script. This worked well but had a number of limitations. As well as being “technically” unsupported, the database had to be loaded with parameters from a CSV file before tests and you had to remember to save the “database” to a file each time that you shut it down.

VTS2 doesn’t have these limitations. It is based on the Mongo NoSQL database and can handle up to 2000 txns/sec easily (I can’t wait to try this properly). Media for VTS2 comes with LoadRunner 11.52 or is downloadable from HP SSO.

LoadRunner 12.0 ?
Silvia mentioned the fact that there were so many new features, some people within HP felt that this could merit a new major version number rather than simply adding 0.02 to the last release. This reminded me of Stuart Moncrieff’s summary of 11.50 last year. Having seen the new features, I think that she’s probably right, LoadRunner 12.0 and Performance Center 12.0 are probably already here 🙂

Evian’s “Baby and Me app” performs like a geriatric…..

According to the Danone website, “Baby & Me, created by BETC, shows a street full of people rediscovering their inner youth – and dance moves – as their reflections reveal the baby versions of their adult selves.” If you haven’t seen the advert, you should watch “Baby & Me” on YouTube, it’s fantastic; a perfect example of a viral marketing campaign with over 59 million YouTube views. This advert builds on the success of their “Roller Babies” campaign from a few years ago (69 million views). I’ve shown it to my children and my wife and everybody I’ve mentioned it to seems to have seen it. Evian is reaching a mass market with relatively little TV advertising spend.


To capitalise on the success of the advert, Evian has commissioned the production of a “Baby and Me” app for iOS and Android. On the face of it, this looks like a great idea. The application takes a picture of you as an adult and then uses pattern matching to identify over 70 facial features in a database of baby pictures. The application then creates a composite image of you as a baby. This has great potential for social sharing of images and it isn’t hard to see how this could help to ensure that even more people get the “Release the inner you” message from Evian.

There is no doubt that viral media is a great marketing tool and mobile apps are a great way to use peer interaction and socialisation to spread a message quickly. All good news so far from a marketing / PR perspective, but…….

…….There’s always a “BUT” isn’t there?

Evian Error screenshots
Evian Error screenshots

The Evian app is sadly disappointing.
Anybody who downloads an app that doesn’t work first time is highly likely to delete it and never use it again. Negative publicity from colleagues and friends who can’t use the app will do a great deal to damage any positive marketing messages that the app was intended to create

It is highly likely that the application designers and developers have been forced to work to a difficult schedule to get this application to market. Whilst individual teams may have all tested their application components; it is highly likely that proper end-to-end testing, including testing over relatively slow 3G and Wifi networks has not been done. Performance testing is crucial for applications like this, a poor user experience will result in users abandoning the application and never downloading it again.

So what went wrong?
Whilst performance testing is a well-established profession……
…testers need to evolve.

  • 15 years ago testers needed to understand thick clients and complex client-server apps.
  • 10 years ago, web applications dominated the market and testers skills (and pay rates) started to fall.
  • 5 years ago, Web 2.0 and mobile technologies started to develop and many testers failed to understand the complexity of more complex multi-tier web applications.
  • Now testers need the ability, skills and tools to test across multiple devices and multiple networks and need a deep understanding of application architecture to ensure application stability, scalability and performance under load.

Many testers don’t have the required skills or testing tools to test complex multi-tier applications across different devices and network topologies. Evian have used big-hitting media companies, BETC Digital and B-Reel, to develop their application…. I bet they’re wishing that they had the application tested properly by an independent testing specialist before this week!

The

MindMeister Review

Last year I was doing an OU computing course and one of the modules required the team to work on a virtual software development project. Each of us was assigned a different role in the team and we had to work collaboratively both on and offline.

I’ve always liked using MindMaps because like most humans I don’t think in a straight line. I like the fact that with a mind map I can throw disjointed ideas at a page and put them into some sort of order later on. It’s great for creating a sketchy/work-in-progress outline of a document or presentation allowing you to reorder the content. I’ve used Mindjet and FreeMind in the past but when I want to do collaborative work I tend to use MindMeister.

I’ve used this in the following different ways:

  • With clients when planning IT projects and creating task lists / high-level project plans.
  • With the local Cub Scout leader when organising the new “Sixes”.
  • With the Vivit Board of Directors when doing a SWOT analysis for Vivit Worldwide.

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