Configuring Real User Behavior in LoadRunner – Time
Posted: April 22nd, 2008 | Author: TnT Admin | Filed under: Concepts | Tags: LoadRunner, Scripting | No Comments »In Loadrunner, there are features to emulate real user behavior and in today’s article, we will briefly touch on the type of configuration/techniques available. Take note that we are not covering the emulation of locality and network-related issues. These will be covered in subsequent articles. Configurables for user behavior in Vugen are as followed:
1. Think Time
2. Action Blocks
3. Pacing
4. Iteration
Configurables for user behavior in Controller are as followed:
5. Ramp-up and Ramp-down rate
6. Rendezvous
We will go through the details of the configuration in future posts. Do stay tuned to it. For the purpose of the discussion, we will relate to a web application with form submission ability.
[1] Think Time
Think Time is a value that emulates the time the real user is thinking, performing an action or doing nothing at all. This value is being recorded as it is during the recording process.
Why do we need Think Time? Think time represent the real time used by the user perform their daily task. Note that when Vugen records, it records network traffic. During replay, it merely runs the script to re-generate network traffic. In this way, if think time is not included in the replay, the script will run without any delay (consideration of the time needed by users to think, act and wait) which will replay as a more like a robot than human.
E.g.
You want to emulate the user typing and reading the form before the submission which may take approximately 20secs.
[2] Action Blocks
Action Blocks allow different activities to be performed either concurrently or mutually exclusively. This is useful when you define the virtual user to be more humane as it has more “options/choices” to execute its activity.
E.g
You want to emulate the user to perform submission for 7 times. After the 7th submission, you want the user to review the submitted forms.
[3] Pacing
Pacing is the time interval between Action Blocks. This may be needed when you want to have a delay between the actions you’ve created, creating a more realistic replay. As mentioned in Think Time, if no delay is involved, the script will replay excatly like a robot.
E.g.
You want to emulate the user having delays from the 1st form submission to the Nth form submission as the user maybe running some other errands between each submissions. This delay is then configured to the estimated errand time.
[4] Iteration
Iteration allows the action block to be repeated per script. This is useful when the real user accessing the application maybe performing a particular action more than once.
E.g.
You want to emulate the user performing same submissions for 20 times.
[5] Ramp up and Ramp-down Rate
This is the rate at which you are emulating the users to access the application. In a real world scenario, users will access the system at different timing of the day. As such, ramp-up rate helps to emulate such behavior. This is the same as for ramp-down where you configure the rate the virtual users to exit the application.
E.g.
You want to emulate the users accessing the application at 9am, 9:15am, 9:30am, 9:45am and 10am at a rate of 5 users in each 15min interval.
[6] Rendezvous
When you want to emulate a certain amount of users accessing the application at the same time, Rendezvous point becomes useful in consolidating the users to a certain time and releasing them accordingly to your configuration.
E.g.
You want to emulate 10 users reviewing the submitted form at the same time after submission at the same time. In Vugen, you define the point in the script where the virtual users will wait for 10 users to arrive at the same point before continuing the business process.
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