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Webload - Open source performance testing tool.

When Radview announced that their flagship product Webload was to become open source, a truly world class performance tool was made freely available. The reasons behind Radview's move may be pure survival based, with their stock bumping around 10 cents on the Over The Counter trading systems, but the benefit to website testers is huge. Webload has been amongst the top web performance testing tools for over a decade but this space is highly competitive, with Loadrunner form HP (that purchased Mercury interactive) being the dominant player. As anyone, who has asked for a quote, for Loadrunner from HP knows the entry point for Loadrunner is in the tens of thousands of dollars.

What makes Webload stand out?

There are a number of features offered by Webload that make it a clear leader for web server performance testing. These are:-

Supports https recording

Uses Java script for script programming

Allows for session handling, outside of cookies

Supports Ajax, SOAP and Web services

Has an active forum for support questions

The features listed above are the differentiating features, from current open source performance testing tools, and these are discussed in more detail below. Other features of Webload (that are also present in some of the existing open source testing tools) include:-

Allows for automated script recording

Allows for use of any COM or Java object in the test script

Has script debugging features, step through etc.

Supports command line execution, thus enabling a scheduled run

Has a separate performance monitoring program

Webload features explained.

HTTPS recording.

Other open source tools, for example OPENSTA, allow for https playback in other words executing a test using http but do not allow for https recording. The advantages of recording a test script in https mean that the web systems administrator does not have to make available the web server on a normal http port.

Java script as the web script authoring tool

Some open source performance tool vendors, notably OPENSTA have their own proprietary scripting language that makes learning and portability difficult.

Allows for session handling, outside of cookies.

This feature is lacking in most of the other open source performance tools. Session handling outside of cookies is typically done via a method known as url rewriting. With url rewriting a dynamic web page is built that includes the session id, so a link becomes link+Session-ID, in this way they web server knows which user has made the request and the appropriate user session data can be retrieved. The user session data could be a shopping cart, in the case of Amazon.com. What url rewriting implies is that the request can only be constructed at run time and each request will be different for each user. What Webload allows for is the retrieval of the returned http body, the session id can then be extracted (using Java script regular expressions) and the appropriate request can be constructed with the Session ID included. The majority of open source http performance testing tools do not have this feature.

Supports Ajax, SOAP and Web services.

Although these protocols sit on top of http, the requests and response all require some construction and deconstruction, Webload takes care of this processing.

Active forum.

Anyone who has used open source tools knows the value of an active forum, hosted by the vendor, in order to answer how to types of questions and possibly initiate bug fix requests. Webload has an active forum that is monitored by Radview employees.

Conclusion.

Anyone tasked with performance testing a web server should evaluate Webload. Its current feature set surpasses any open source performance testing tool today and an active community and development team should ensure that this differentiation continues.

No guarantee (or claim) is made regarding the accuracy of this information. Any questions or comments should be sent to:-