These release notes describe new features and enhancements added in several builds, issued after launching the 3.0 public beta.
1. Cloning test cases. Performance testing frequently requires running several similar test scenarios. The current version simplifies creation of such testing scenarios by cloning an existing test case. To create a copy of the selected test case, in the Multi Test Cases section, click "Clone Test Case" on the toolbar. All sessions and configuration settings will be duplicated.
2. Displaying more complete definition of pages with AJAX requests. StresStimulus uses a heuristic algorithm to determine which requests that are loaded before the page is displayed in a browser, and which are presumed to be loaded after that (e.g. AJAX requests). The former are called performance impacting requests, while the latter are non-performance impacting. Performance impacting requests statistics are displayed now for every page with Ajax requests.
The following additional parameters are added to the property grid in the Page Settings section:
- P.I. URLs - The number of Page performance impacting requests
- P.I. Request Size (KB) - The size of the page's performance impacting requests
- P.I. Response Size (KB) - The size of the page's performance impacting responses
3. Marking AJAX requests. In several areas where the page/ request tree is displayed, non-performance impacting requests are designated by an AJAX image.
4. More granular configuration of pages and requests. The following settings now can be configured not only for a page, but also for every request if necessary:
- Caching rules: select "Not Cached" to always request the session disregarding recorded caching headers. Select "Cached" to never request the session for returning VUs with enabled caching. Select "Normal" to use the recorded caching headers.
- Timeouts - the maximum amount of time for receiving the request. A timeout error is triggered if the session's response time exceeds the Timeout.
To achieve that, in the Page Settings section, the Page object now displays child Requests objects. The following functions are added to the context menu of the request objects:
- Show sessions on test case tree
- Show session in the session grid
- Clone session
- Delete session
5. Creating multiple parameters got easier. Parameters are created by replacing recorded values with dynamic variables. Sometimes the same variable should be used across multiple requests. In the previous versions in order to use the same variable in multiple requests, the bulk replace by value or by name commands were used in the parameterization grid. In this update, the bulk replace commands are replaced by the more flexible "Find and Replace parameters' values (Ctrl+F)" command.
In the parameterization grid, select a parameter and hit Ctrl+F. A pop-up search window will appear. For "bulk replace" functionality, use the "Replace All" button in the pop-up window. To selectively create only necessary parameters, use the Find and Replace buttons. To search by recorded value, check the "Search by value" box.
"Find and Replace parameters' values" command works for POST and GET requests and can handle parameters in the request body, query string or headers.
6. Support for Url decoding. In Extractors, an option was added to enable Url decoding. Example of URL-decoding: converting: "%3F" to "?".
7. Disable caching for parameterized URLs. If the URL of a request is parameterized, then caching for such requests is automatically disabled regardless of user settings. This helps to avoid mistakes of caching requests with dynamic URLs.
To navigate to other parts of the v3.0 release notes, click the links below:
StresStimulus 3.0 beta is available here.