Sunnyvale, California application testing software developer Mercury Interactive Corp yesterday launched version six of its flagship TestSuite trio of products, the major development being the increased focus on web-based applications and e-commerce. Also unveiled was the initial spec for the ‘Topaz’ project, a tool designed to monitor web experiences from a user’s perspective. Mercury says it has a 45% share of the distributed systems testing market, and wants now to insure it does not lose this lead due to the rise of e-commerce.
TestSuite comprises LoadRunner, WinRunner and TestDirector, and each has had various compatibilities and functions added to bring the range into the web age. The greatest changes have been made to the LoadRunner performance testing tool, with the inclusion of an IP spoofer that allows a single client to hit a system as if it were 100 users, each from different IP addresses, to test multiple routers and servers on a system, to simulate live conditions. This tool also incorporates some of the functionality-checking of the WinRunner program to gauge the effects of overload on web pages and applications. A real-time monitor has also been tagged on for effect.
WinRunner, the functionality testing tool, has had various wizards bolted on to create testing scripts in a C variant, to reduce time spent creating client-server function tests. There is also a data verification procedure that tries to spot mistakes made in transit between input and database. The TestDirector tools has been flashed up and now contains the ability to automatically generate HTML and MS Word reports for management’s perusal, as well as a version control function. All three tools have had compatibility with various protocols and objects added on, including Corba and DCOM for LoadRunner, and Linux compatibility. The suite will cost $62,500 for a one user license when released in August.
Topaz is the code name for Mercury’s latest venture into client-side web site testing. The software will be released in September, and is a low-end version of Tivoli’s Application Performance Manager (which was based on Mercury technology) targeted at developers of e-commerce web sites. Mercury says Topaz will test a web site experience from a user’s perspective by running randomly sampled transactional data through a virtual Topaz machine, to build up a picture of how a user views a site. This is in contrast to firms such as Candle Corp, which also operates in this space with a Java applet-based system that samples all site user all the time to build a complete picture of the transaction experience. Mercury says it did not go down this path due to the ‘Heisenberg’ effect of throwing the results with unnecessary intrusion into the process.
