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.

StarWest 2008 Conference Update - We will be in Booth #9

As you may already know* the folks at J9 Technologies are pleased to announce that we will be attending the StarWest 2008 Conference in Anaheim, CA next week. The conference runs for days and days, but we will be participating as an exhibitor, so as far as we are concerned the most important part of the conference goes from Sept. 30th through Oct. 2nd. We will be showing off our new Protocol Add-ins for LoadRunner, giving demos and free trial licenses for them, unveiling to our new On Demand Testing Suite, and generally schmoozing with strangers. Come by and visit us at Booth #9 and see the only one-handed bottle opener you will probably ever get for free.

And if all of that doesn’t give you reason enough, and you are still in the fence about such a proposition, here are the top ten reasons to attend this event – as compiled by the StarWest organizers themselves. Some of which may seem boring, yet informative.

1. Over 100 learning sessions: tutorials, keynotes, conference sessions, bonus sessions, and more
2. In-depth tutorials, half- and full-day options—double the number of classes from last year
3. Cutting-edge testing answers from top testing experts
4. Presentations from highly experienced testing professionals
5. Networking opportunities with your peers in the industry
6. Special events—welcome reception, bookstore, meet the speakers, and more
7. The largest testing EXPO anywhere
8. Group discounts—bring your whole team
9. The perfect balance of learning and fun in Southern California
10. All this at the happiest place on Earth—Disneyland® Hotel!


We hope to see you there!


*If you don’t already know about a certain Belated Disneyland Fetish that one marketing manager in our company has, please scroll down to the posting featuring keyword “Disneyland” to learn all about the excitement first hand.

JMS Protocol Add-in for LoadRunner is now available

With the explosion of Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) applications and their SOA counterparts, QA professionals must face the challenge of creating real-world testing conditions for these complicated, multi-node, composite applications. From a testing perspective…How do you generate hundreds of unique messages every second? How do you simulate a transaction that consists of HTTP, SOAP, JMS and JDBC protocols? What is the maximum de-queue rate of the application’s Message-Driven Beans? How can you test all of the possible routes a message may take through the application without requiring the Java knowledge to hand-code an extensive test harness?

The JMS Protocol Add-in helps you tackle these problems head on. By extending the capabilities of HP LoadRunner, the JMS Protocol Add-in help stress and isolate problems in the messaging tier and ensure applications are deployed with confidence. Turn a new page on middleware performance testing In today’s multi-tier distributed applications, some of the most critical bottlenecks reside in connections to backend systems, such as a database, message queue or the mainframe. In the past, the crucial task of isolating, testing and tuning messaging operations required creation of complex scripts that rely on in-depth Java and application knowledge. This adds a
tremendous burden to the already full plates faced by many quality assurance teams.
The JMS Protocol Add-in from J9 Technologies helps you stress the messaging middleware
layer and identify bottlenecks before deploying in production. Based on years of testing and diagnostics expertise in helping some of the world’s largest enterprises,
this solution automatically captures all JMS traffic going from a Java application to the backend message queues and plays them back to directly exercise the messaging tier
for high concurrency testing.

The JMS Protocol Add-in for HP LoadRunner helps you:
• Verify messaging infrastructure
supports a high volume of messages
• Obtain an accurate picture of backend
system performance
• Isolate and eliminate performance
bottlenecks in the messaging tier

How it works
Leveraging HP LoadRunner and VuGen technology, the JMS Protocol Add-in records all JMS put and get operations and captures them in standardized scripts. These scripts can be used to simulate targeted loads in terms of concurrent users to almost any JMS provider. This easy-to-use solution helps QA teams scale up backend testing by applying very measurable and repeatable loads that expose any potential problems early in the development cycle. The JMS Protocol Add-in eliminates the dependency on the application tier for direct testing of the messaging tier. Autogenerated scripts represent real-world load, and can be easily parameterized to create accurate and realistic mix of users for stressing the messaging tier. Detailed measurements are captured and provided to the HP LoadRunner Analysis application for side-by-side metric comparisons between test runs.

Get more out of Hp LoadRunner
HP LoadRunner is the market leading performance validation solution embraced by 77% of all QA professionals. J9’s HP LoadRunner Protocol Add-ins are fully integrated into the full suite of HP LoadRunner solutions. The JMS Protocol Add-in can be used alongside all other HP LoadRunner protocols to create a more realistic and comprehensive load test. With the simplicity of the solution, any skilled HP LoadRunner user can start using JMS Protocol Add-in with no additional training, and be productive immediately. With the JMS Protocol Add-in, recording of all JMS put and get operations happen exactly as they occur in sequence, and entirely on the server side. This unique feature is very beneficial in situations where client side recording is not feasible, and allows for server-side only testing that does not require installing VuGen on the backend systems.

JDBC Protocol Add-in for LoadRunner now available from J9 Technologies

Some of the most critical bottlenecks reside in connections to backend systems, such as a database or the mainframe. But testing the connections to these systems is no trivial matter. This often requires creation of complex scripts that rely on in-depth application knowledge and even Java development skills.

JDBC Protocol Add-in helps you stress the data connections and isolate any bottlenecks before deploying in production. It captures all SQL traffic going from a Java application to the backend database and plays them back to directly exercise the data tier for high concurrency testing. This solution leverages J9's expertise in testing and diagnostics of enterprise Java applications and is fully complementary to HP's industry-leading LoadRunner product. This perfect marriage helps reduce testing costs and prevent potential problems in production.

Features

Test application backend without writing Java code

Scale up and perform load tests to simulate hundreds of simultaneous users accessing the database without needing to create a front-end application. This singles out any potential bottlenecks in the critical data connection layer without putting additional burden on the QA teams.

Captures and Plays back JDBC statements

Records and replays all Java SQL statements, including all prepared statements and callable statements.

Enables Simple Parameterization

It's easy to parameterize within the generated test scripts to create a realistic mix of users and data for the high concurrency load tests.

Heterogeneous Platform Support

Works seamlessly with any database, on any OS platform.

Benefits

Shorten testing cycles

Deliver significant time savings in the testing of middleware and backend tiers.

Improve application service levels

Fully stress the critical JDBC connection to prevent potential problems after the applications are deployed.

Baseline data tier performance

With stress tests targeted exclusively at the backend, realistic SLAs can be created to measure and benchmark future performance.

Empower QA Engineers

Enable QA engineers to extensively test the JDBC connection without requiring Java knowledge and without additional training. Fully leverage existing skills in knowledge of HP LoadRunner solution.

Supported Platforms

• all common Java application servers including Weblogic and Websphere.

• all common Databases including Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server

• Java 1.4 and up