Agile Performance Testing - Testing Experience

The case study was conducted to test Reach-U’s (http://www.
reach-u.com/) Workforce Management (WFM) application, a
web-based mobile positioning application developed by Reach-U.
WFM is an application that can observe a workforce’s movement
history, location and send SMSs to personnel via the web browser
client. WFM’s users are primarily companies that would like to
track and plan their workforce locations in real time.
Figure 1: General architecture of WFM
The case study was performed to evaluate the applicability of
model-based testing for testing web services via functional and
load testing – use cases where an operator uses a WFM webclient
to locate targets were tested. Only servers that are part of
WFM were in the scope of the implementation under test (IUT).
A web client was simulated by the test system. It is worth noting
that testing the functionality of the web client itself was out of
the scope of the case study.
The following aspects were evaluated in the case study:
• Overall feasibility of model-based testing technology for
testing web services.
• Applicability of model-based testing technology for load
testing.
Implementation
In the case study we used a test generator producing TTCN-3
test scripts automatically from the State Model (UML) of the IUT,
© iStockphoto.com/kryczka
Case study: Testing of Mobile
Positioning Web Services by Dr. Andres Kull
a full-feature TTCN-3 test development and execution platform
and the JMeter (JMet) load tester. Additionally, a system adapter
was developed to communicate between WFM and the TTCN-3
test development and execution platform as well as the JMeter
load tester.
Firstly, the TTCN-3 scripts generator was used to generate TTCN-3
test cases from the system model.
The test cases generated from the
model were executed on the TTCN-
3 test development and execution
platform. Test cases controlled the
execution of JMeter as well. JMeter
was used to generate the load for
the server infrastructure of WFM.
The test cases instructed JMeter
to vary the load. Therefore, the test
cases were communicated to two
counterparts – the IUT and JMeter.
In between, the system adapter
was developed. The system adapter
connected to the TTCN-3 test development
and execution platform
to WFM and JMeter. The interface
of the system adapter towards
WFM provided HTTP message traffic
over TCP/IP. In this way the test
cases ran on the TTCN-3 execution platform and simulated the
WFM web-client. The interface of the system adapter to JMeter allowed
JMeter to be controlled by HTTP GET messages over TCP/IP.
Figure 2: The test environment of the WFM
76 The Magazine for Professional Testers www.testingexperience.com