StresStimulus v5.0.7115
StresStimulus v5.0.7115
StresStimulus is a load testing tool for websites, mobile and Enterprise apps. It determines the web performance and scalability of your application under the rigors of heavy traffic load. Hundreds or thousands of physical users are realistically emulated through on-premise load generators or in a cloud testing environment. At the same time, server monitoring information is collected in real-time to pinpoint application performance bottlenecks and isolate web speed issues.
StresStimulus makes website stress testing and mobile performance testing super easy thanks to its end-to-end test wizard that walks you through recording, configuring and executing tests. It also saves time on mobile app load testing due to its out-of-the-box support for native app frameworks. What sets StresStimulus apart from other performance testing tools is its support for complex websites and apps combined with its competitive pricing.
Stress Test Your Website with Ease
Record any browser or web application activity and StresStimulus will replay it with hundreds or thousands of concurrent users. It executes HTTP load testing by accurately emulating and measuring user impact on server infrastructure.
Improve Web Performance Faster
Monitor the performance of every HTTP request, page and transaction. StresStimulus will help to isolate performance bottlenecks and poor scaling areas so you can focus only on areas that require optimization.
Select On-Premise or Cloud Load Testing
Run tests from a single test machine or spread virtual users between any number of load generators instantiated on-premise, on your private cloud or in public clouds such as Amazon Web Services or Azure.
Mobile App Load Testing
Record traffic from your Apple, Android, Windows phone or Blackberry mobile device, and then replay it to realistically emulate your user-base. Comprehensive mobile performance reports help pinpoint any performance irregularities and optimize your app.
Supports All Major Web & Enterprise App Platforms
StresStimulus works with all main web platforms, like ASP.NET, Java, PHP and with the majority of Enterprise application platforms such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SharePoint, Silverlight, Oracle, GWT and SAP BPC.
The Only Load Testing Tool That Works in Fiddler
Fiddler is the world's most popular free web debugging proxy. In addition to working as a stand-alone stress testing tool, StresStimulus can also be a Fiddler add-on to combine performance testing and debugging in one solution.
Recording Usage Scenarios
Automated load test recording. Record website usage scenarios in your web browser. In non-browser applications, capture web traffic from Silverlight or other Rich Internet Applications (RIA) or mobile applications and then create a test case with one mouse click.
Supported protocols and technologies: HTTP, HTTPS, AJAX, SOAP, WCF, binary WCF, and XML over HTTP.
Dynamic pages. In order to maintain the integrity of dynamic webpages, some of their parameters are generated during test replay to mimic a browser's and user's behavior. Session IDs, cookies and certain request parameters (e.g. ASP.NET view state) are generated using autocorrelation or heuristic algorithms. This allows StresStimulus to support out-of-the-box testing of many sophisticated web applications such as Microsoft CRM Dynamics, SharePoint, and Salesforce.com.
Parameterization with external data. To simulate realistic data entry performed by VUs, provide CSV files with relevant production data and map data fields to Post or Get request parameters. During the replay, StresStimulus automatically replaces recorded values with external data using one of several available data-binding methods.
Authentication. If you need to give every virtual user (VU) a unique identity, simply provide a data set with user credentials. Multiple secure authentication methods are supported, including Web Forms, Basic, NTLM, and Kerberos.
Scripting is not required, but is available. Create the entire test case through a GUI and wizard-based interface in minutes without touching script. If you need more sophisticated testing rules, the Fiddler .NET-based scripting platform is available.
Emulating Workload
Load Patterns. To simulate production load, peak load or run a stress test, set the number of VUs and select steady or step load pattern. If necessary, adjust the VU count after the test has started.
Browser and Network mix. Let your test client behave as hundreds of computers connected via different networks and using different browsers. Select browsers and network types from the list and add them to the mix. You also can add a custom network with a specific connection speed.
Think and Warm-up Times. When replaying the tests, use recorded or custom think times to reflect human user wait time between clicks. Customize or disable think times for selected pages, test iterations or for the entire test case. Set a warm-up time to prepare the server for normal working conditions at the beginning of the test.
Cache and Session Control. To simulate a mix of new and returning users, set a percentage of users with empty browser cache vs. users with primed browser cache. You can also simulate a mix of users restarting browsers and users continuing with the same browser session.
Running Load Test
VU count adjustment on-demand. Get more control over the test by adjusting the VU count while the test is running. Discover your websites behavior patterns with ease to simplify performance troubleshooting. For example, a StresStimulus user noticed that the average response time has sharply increased after changing the VU count from 100 to 120. Is this behavior random or consistent? With VU count adjustment on-demand, the user can repeat the same VU change on-the-fly several times within the same test to answer this question.
Efficient load engine. The lightweight yet powerful StresStimulus load engine can generate requests from thousands of users in a single box. It saves costs by requiring fewer licenses and test computers, while simplifying the configuration of sizable test rigs.
Monitoring Performance
Key performance indicators (KPI). The following parameters are graphed in real time alongside the VU count: requests per second, response time, network bandwidth and error rate. Their instantaneous, minimum, maximum, and average values are constantly monitored. KPI graphs are interactive and customizable. Underlying data can be exported for further analysis.
Server and client performance counters. Add any of the server or client Windows performance counters to the real time graph. Depending on what system area you want to monitor, select ASP.NET, ASP, SQL Server counters or other parameters, such as CPU, memory, and network utilization.
In-Depth Reporting
Test Summary. The test Summary is a high-level report that presents key performance metrics and gives a bird's-eye view of the load test.
Page, request and VU details. Detailed reports give a complete performance snapshot of every page, request, and VU simulated experience. They provide deep test analytics to accurately pinpoint application performance bottlenecks.
Custom performance goals. Set a response time threshold for individual pages and watch which pages are not in compliance with their respective goals under various loads.
Analysis of a complete transaction log. StresStimulus stores every HTTP session generated during the load test. Flexible filtering allows you to display the sessions of a particular user, iteration, page or URL in Fiddler to conduct deeper performance analysis. For example, you can compare waterfall diagrams of the same page under different load levels to determine what parts of the page are more vulnerable to the high loads.
What's New in v5.0
New Features and Improvements:
Breakthrough Upgrades:
Cloud testing
Seamlessly provision AWS on-demand instances right in StresStimulus for use as load agents
Chose a virtual machine from anywhere in the world
Pick your load agent machine's tech specs
Delete the cloud instance right in StresStimulus when you are done
No additional cost for licensed StresStimulus users (only standard AWS fees apply)
IP Spoofing for performance testing load balancers.
No-Proxy Recording (aka Tunnel recording mode). Now StresStimulus supports scenario recording from client applications and native mobile apps that don't use system proxy settings and don't allow manual proxy settings.
Supports multiple https hosts for a single app
More Versatile Test Designer for Higher Productivity
Reusable Test profiles to save time on test configuration. In previous versions, you had enter test configurations such as load and VU settings each time you created a test. Now you can save your settings to a profile and use it in multiple tests.
Disabling transactions. Now you can disable transactions you wish to skip during test replay.
Simplified use of datasets using default databinding. Now you can specify a default databinding method for a dataset once instead of specifying it for every parameter using this dataset.
VU-Iteration-Random databinding method for enhanced Dataset utilization. It consumes dataset rows in random order.
Copyable object descriptions on the test case tree. Just select any object and hit Ctrl+C and its description will be copied to the clipboard.
More robust cookie parameterization. Now the value of the Set-Cookie object can be an expression consisting of several variables and constant strings instead of just a single variable (e.g., extractor or dataset).
Expressions in validation rules. Validators that now support expressions with extractors.
Verification of multiple iterations. It may be helpful to verify the 2nd iteration when a login transaction is marked to run on the first iteration only.
Verification tree with multiple test cases. It is useful when comparing TCGroup iterations.
Transactions and pages on the verification tree. Now the verification tree shows not only sessions but also the entire test case hierarchy that simplifies locating any replay issues.
Comparing recorded and replayed extractor in verification tree. Troubleshoot script by comparing recorded and replayed extractor's sessions from Extractor verification tree.
More robust custom patterns. Now you can customize how patterns are used to create parameters by using formatted parameters.
Session Image view allows inspecting individual images.
Image Comparer. Now you can compare recorded and replayed images which is helpful for our applications with dynamic images.
Status Bar in Test Case Tree displays the number and type of selected objects.
Now extractors and patterns can be Base64-encoded if necessary.
Compatibility with Windows language packs.
Option to exclude some MIME types and pages from the autocorrelation.
Extractors in scriptable components. Now a scriptable component can access an extractor that eliminates the need for parsing a response.
Simplified invocation of a scriptable component. Previously you need to program at which point of a test case iteration to invoke the scriptable component. Now you can automatically run the scriptable component at the end of every iteration.
Reducing Test Storage Use. Increased efficiency of test storage utilization by more than 800%.
Ease of Use Enhancements
Diagnostic in opening test cases. Now error reporting will display the test case name and session number that fails to load. It can help with opening tests with multiple test cases when one of them is corrupted.
Create parameters faster. When searching a particular value in the test case requests, the sessions(s) containing the value will be highlighted. After creating a parameter on these session(s), the value will be already highlighted in the parameterization controls.
Text Comparer. This built-in utility compares any arbitrary texts and color-code differences. It is helpful to compare any fragments of requests or responses necessary for manual correlation and parameterization.
Preventing frequent errors when modifying hosts. Prevent changing it using the request inspector. Instead, this should be done using Host Remapping feature.
Preventing an error with entering the recorded host and new host in the reverse order in the host remapping dialog.
Simplified test storage management by merging settings for requests and response content into a single Purge Session Content property.
Easier certificate installation on mobile devices. In the previous versions this required proxy configuration. Now it is no longer necessary.
View Options on toolbars. On the Extractor Tree and Test Case tree, several toolbar buttons are combined under "View Options" button to condense required screen space and simplify usage.
"Create Container" and "Insert Object" sub-menus groups on the test case tree context menu to improve usability.
All objects on the test case tree are draggable. In previous versions, you could only drag and drop session objects to re-position them. Now you can drag-and-drop all objects.
Context-sensitive Help in property grids. Property grids included a link to a pop-up help window containing an additional description of the property.
When displaying the test case tree for the first time, the property grid below is shown expanded.
Now you can change the folder to store the SQL CE database files from the Result storage property grid.
Avoid false-positive warning due to recorded and replayed response size discrepancy. Previously when a response of a session executed on a load agent is configured to be truncated, it was flagged on Verification Tree with warning status. Now such sessions are marked with the unknown status.
Lean UI mode notification on the test case tree to inform users that some parameters are hidden to prevent UI slowness.
When recording USD scenarios, the first transaction is automatically set to Login.
Skip proxy diagnostic option allows disabling proxy diagnostic when it interferes with Scenario recording.
Broader application support
Added support for SAP Netweaver.
Support for client certificates authentication.
Support for SignalR applications.
Support recording scenarios with Brotli compression in Chrome.
Simplified Scenario Recording
More reliable scenario recording from fat clients. Now you can specify a client's process name to record only relevant requests.
Add a sub-scenario recording to an existing test case. Now we can expand an existing test case by recording additional user actions.
Mobile scenarios: Easiest certificate installation on mobile devices.
Recording USD scenarios: Now StresStimulus will launch USD even if it is installed in a non-default folder.
Automatic cash clearing when recording from USD.
Automatic IE cache clearing in normal mode. When a scenario cannot be recorded in private mode, now you can record it in normal mode and still avoid manual cache clearing.
Automatically determining unnecessary hosts and deleting their sessions with one click.
Recording PATCH requests.
Recording scenarios in Microsoft Edge private mode.
Enhanced Reporting
Monitoring errors during test execution. In previous versions, you could analyze errors only after the test completion. Now you can monitor errors as they occur in real time.
Custom reports with SQL CE Test Repository. Now you can directly query test results stored in SQL CE files to generate custom reports. Previously, custom reports were only available for SQL Server repositories.
Custom re-scaling of individual graph curves. Now you can customize each curve's scale in the test result for better graph presentation.
Compare a transaction, page or iteration from the report with the recording (request-by-request.
Test output to save values of extractors and data generators collected during the test execution.
More Robust Load Generators and Automation
Better control over the test workflow. Now we can limit the number of iterations for specific test cases so that they can stop before the test completion.
Test case bound to a load agent. Now you can assign a test case to a specific load agent.
Enhanced Command Line Interface now allows running tests with a specified test profiles.
Command line interface now allows specifying a test run name and description which will be displayed in the report.
Upgraded scripting event model. Added OnAfterIteration event that is triggered on completion of each iteration. It can be useful to create custom processing after replaying a script by a VU.
Added a validator failure option to abort a VU.
Simplified monitoring of load agents. Now load generator machine and security account information are determined automatically by the performance monitoring module.
Asynchronous requests. Previously, async requests in a scenario locked execution of a test case. Now this limitation was removed.
Automatic synchronization datasets with data sources.
New Features and Improvements:
Breakthrough Upgrades:
Cloud testing
Seamlessly provision AWS on-demand instances right in StresStimulus for use as load agents
Chose a virtual machine from anywhere in the world
Pick your load agent machine's tech specs
Delete the cloud instance right in StresStimulus when you are done
No additional cost for licensed StresStimulus users (only standard AWS fees apply)
IP Spoofing for performance testing load balancers.
No-Proxy Recording (aka Tunnel recording mode). Now StresStimulus supports scenario recording from client applications and native mobile apps that don't use system proxy settings and don't allow manual proxy settings.
Supports multiple https hosts for a single app
More Versatile Test Designer for Higher Productivity
Reusable Test profiles to save time on test configuration. In previous versions, you had enter test configurations such as load and VU settings each time you created a test. Now you can save your settings to a profile and use it in multiple tests.
Disabling transactions. Now you can disable transactions you wish to skip during test replay.
Simplified use of datasets using default databinding. Now you can specify a default databinding method for a dataset once instead of specifying it for every parameter using this dataset.
VU-Iteration-Random databinding method for enhanced Dataset utilization. It consumes dataset rows in random order.
Copyable object descriptions on the test case tree. Just select any object and hit Ctrl+C and its description will be copied to the clipboard.
More robust cookie parameterization. Now the value of the Set-Cookie object can be an expression consisting of several variables and constant strings instead of just a single variable (e.g., extractor or dataset).
Expressions in validation rules. Validators that now support expressions with extractors.
Verification of multiple iterations. It may be helpful to verify the 2nd iteration when a login transaction is marked to run on the first iteration only.
Verification tree with multiple test cases. It is useful when comparing TCGroup iterations.
Transactions and pages on the verification tree. Now the verification tree shows not only sessions but also the entire test case hierarchy that simplifies locating any replay issues.
Comparing recorded and replayed extractor in verification tree. Troubleshoot script by comparing recorded and replayed extractor's sessions from Extractor verification tree.
More robust custom patterns. Now you can customize how patterns are used to create parameters by using formatted parameters.
Session Image view allows inspecting individual images.
Image Comparer. Now you can compare recorded and replayed images which is helpful for our applications with dynamic images.
Status Bar in Test Case Tree displays the number and type of selected objects.
Now extractors and patterns can be Base64-encoded if necessary.
Compatibility with Windows language packs.
Option to exclude some MIME types and pages from the autocorrelation.
Extractors in scriptable components. Now a scriptable component can access an extractor that eliminates the need for parsing a response.
Simplified invocation of a scriptable component. Previously you need to program at which point of a test case iteration to invoke the scriptable component. Now you can automatically run the scriptable component at the end of every iteration.
Reducing Test Storage Use. Increased efficiency of test storage utilization by more than 800%.
Ease of Use Enhancements
Diagnostic in opening test cases. Now error reporting will display the test case name and session number that fails to load. It can help with opening tests with multiple test cases when one of them is corrupted.
Create parameters faster. When searching a particular value in the test case requests, the sessions(s) containing the value will be highlighted. After creating a parameter on these session(s), the value will be already highlighted in the parameterization controls.
Text Comparer. This built-in utility compares any arbitrary texts and color-code differences. It is helpful to compare any fragments of requests or responses necessary for manual correlation and parameterization.
Preventing frequent errors when modifying hosts. Prevent changing it using the request inspector. Instead, this should be done using Host Remapping feature.
Preventing an error with entering the recorded host and new host in the reverse order in the host remapping dialog.
Simplified test storage management by merging settings for requests and response content into a single Purge Session Content property.
Easier certificate installation on mobile devices. In the previous versions this required proxy configuration. Now it is no longer necessary.
View Options on toolbars. On the Extractor Tree and Test Case tree, several toolbar buttons are combined under "View Options" button to condense required screen space and simplify usage.
"Create Container" and "Insert Object" sub-menus groups on the test case tree context menu to improve usability.
All objects on the test case tree are draggable. In previous versions, you could only drag and drop session objects to re-position them. Now you can drag-and-drop all objects.
Context-sensitive Help in property grids. Property grids included a link to a pop-up help window containing an additional description of the property.
When displaying the test case tree for the first time, the property grid below is shown expanded.
Now you can change the folder to store the SQL CE database files from the Result storage property grid.
Avoid false-positive warning due to recorded and replayed response size discrepancy. Previously when a response of a session executed on a load agent is configured to be truncated, it was flagged on Verification Tree with warning status. Now such sessions are marked with the unknown status.
Lean UI mode notification on the test case tree to inform users that some parameters are hidden to prevent UI slowness.
When recording USD scenarios, the first transaction is automatically set to Login.
Skip proxy diagnostic option allows disabling proxy diagnostic when it interferes with Scenario recording.
Broader application support
Added support for SAP Netweaver.
Support for client certificates authentication.
Support for SignalR applications.
Support recording scenarios with Brotli compression in Chrome.
Simplified Scenario Recording
More reliable scenario recording from fat clients. Now you can specify a client's process name to record only relevant requests.
Add a sub-scenario recording to an existing test case. Now we can expand an existing test case by recording additional user actions.
Mobile scenarios: Easiest certificate installation on mobile devices.
Recording USD scenarios: Now StresStimulus will launch USD even if it is installed in a non-default folder.
Automatic cash clearing when recording from USD.
Automatic IE cache clearing in normal mode. When a scenario cannot be recorded in private mode, now you can record it in normal mode and still avoid manual cache clearing.
Automatically determining unnecessary hosts and deleting their sessions with one click.
Recording PATCH requests.
Recording scenarios in Microsoft Edge private mode.
Enhanced Reporting
Monitoring errors during test execution. In previous versions, you could analyze errors only after the test completion. Now you can monitor errors as they occur in real time.
Custom reports with SQL CE Test Repository. Now you can directly query test results stored in SQL CE files to generate custom reports. Previously, custom reports were only available for SQL Server repositories.
Custom re-scaling of individual graph curves. Now you can customize each curve's scale in the test result for better graph presentation.
Compare a transaction, page or iteration from the report with the recording (request-by-request.
Test output to save values of extractors and data generators collected during the test execution.
More Robust Load Generators and Automation
Better control over the test workflow. Now we can limit the number of iterations for specific test cases so that they can stop before the test completion.
Test case bound to a load agent. Now you can assign a test case to a specific load agent.
Enhanced Command Line Interface now allows running tests with a specified test profiles.
Command line interface now allows specifying a test run name and description which will be displayed in the report.
Upgraded scripting event model. Added OnAfterIteration event that is triggered on completion of each iteration. It can be useful to create custom processing after replaying a script by a VU.
Added a validator failure option to abort a VU.
Simplified monitoring of load agents. Now load generator machine and security account information are determined automatically by the performance monitoring module.
Asynchronous requests. Previously, async requests in a scenario locked execution of a test case. Now this limitation was removed.
Automatic synchronization datasets with data sources.
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