Why J9 is building protocols for HP LoadRunner?

Our experience last week at StarWest was filled with eureka moments. That's really the greatest benefit we get from attending conference like StarWest -- the opportunity to get hands on with IT practitioners and get a dose of honest feedback.

One of the questions we found ourselves answering over and over related to our jms and jdbc protocols for HP LoadRunner offerings, phrased typically as "Why do I need that?" In fact, the most surprising yet common question we answered was "Doesn't HP already offer this?"

Here's how this situation plays out. When you license HP LoadRunner, whether you realize it or not, you are paying for specific protocols that plug into it. The most common scenario involves purchasing the web protocol, which enables you to record and replay a series of actions against a browser-delivered application. This is a fantastic start down the road of performance and scalability testing, but it isn't the complete story. What if in the course of your performance testing, you want to understand just the scalability of your database separate from the overall scalability of your application? With just the web protocol, you can't do it. And, HP doesn't offer anything that will target your databases and message-oriented middleware in their current protocol lineup. This is where HP Partners like J9 are stepping in to fill a gap, with HP's blessing. With J9's JDBC protocol, you record and replay all of the sql statements -- the interactions between your application and the database -- which allows you to measure just the database performance. The same concept applies to your messaging providers. With J9's JMS protocol, JMS messages are captured and both the consumer and provider perspective can be simulated under load conditions.

Using feedback like we received at StarWest, J9 is continuing our road map of building protocols to enable customers to maximize their investment in HP LoadRunner. We encourage you to download our free, full-featured trial version and to send us feedback on your performance testing experiences.