HTTP test generation preferences
Preference settings control how performance tests are generated, such as how tests will process verification points, data correlation, and generic protocols.
Test generation options
To access the preference settings for test generation options, click , and click the Test Generation Options tab.
- Do not generate a new page if think time is less than
- Enter the shortest time, in milliseconds, that the generator uses as a delay to emulate user think time for an HTTP page. If your tests contain fewer pages than expected, try a shorter interval.
- Generate a new page if delay between requests is greater than
- Enter the longest delay, in milliseconds, that the generator allows between page requests. If this time is exceeded, a new page is generated. If your tests contain more pages than expected, try a longer interval.
- Maximum request delay
- Enter the longest delay, in milliseconds, that the generator allows before truncating HTTP requests. The requests are truncated on the generated test. The recorded test still contains the original values, and you can get them back by generating a new test.
- Save only the first 4KB of responses larger than
- Enter the limit of response data, in KB, that the generator saves. If a response is larger than the specified limit, only the first 4 KB of data is saved.
- Suppress NSLookup() and use numeric IPs
- Select this option to shorten test generation time. The disadvantage is that IP addresses in a test are less user-friendly than web page format (www.example.com).
- Disable Page Cache Emulation during test generation
- Select this option to disable page cache emulation. When page cache emulation is enabled, caching information in server response headers is honored. Additionally, requests are not submitted to the server for content that is confirmed by the client as fresh in the local cache. Page cache emulation is enabled by default.
- Use Legacy Test Generator
- Select this option if you have been instructed to use the legacy HTTP test generator.
- Automatically include verification point of
- Click to specify the types of verification points to be automatically included. If a check box for a verification point is selected, the code and edit controls for this type of verification point are generated in all tests. Verification points can also be enabled or disabled within specific tests.
- Accept sizes for primary request within
- If you are automatically generating response size verification points, click to specify the acceptable size range for primary requests. No error is reported if a response is within the specified percentage above or below the expected size. By default, for primary requests, HTTP response size verification points use range matching.
Data correlation
To access the preference settings for data correlation, click , and click the Data Correlation tab.
- Automatically correlate host and port data
- By default, host and port data is correlated automatically. If tests in a previous release have significant manual correlations, or you are using proxies, the migration of the replace-host functionality feature is likely to fail during playback. In this situation, clear the check box. When you reopen your tests, they will not have the automatic correlation feature in them.
- Automatically correlate URL pathname if redirected by response
- Specifies whether URL path names are correlated if they are redirected by a selected response code. If a check box for a response code is selected, the test generator performs correlations for that response code. This option applies only to responses that are redirects, with a status code between 300 and 399.
- Automatically correlate Referers
- By default, the Referer field in an HTTP request header is correlated automatically. Clear the check box if you plan to correlate Referers manually. If you run tests against servers that do not require a Referer field, clearing this check box reduces the number of correlations performed when the test runs, and can increase user throughput.
- Enable all other data correlation
- By default, request and response data is correlated automatically. Clear the check box to disable automatic data correlation of request and response data. Consider clearing the check box if you create your own data correlation rules in the rules editor.
- Optimize automatic data correlation for execution
- Specifies the characteristic that tests are automated for.
- With the Accuracy setting (the default), many references with an identical session ID value are created and the value of each session ID is substituted from the nearest previous reference.
- To make a test run faster by reducing the number of references that are created during automatic data correlation, change the optimization to Efficiency. For example, consider a test where a session ID, which is assigned when a user logs in, is included in every subsequent request in the test. With the Efficiency setting, all session IDs are substituted from a single previous reference. The downside of this setting is that it can result in incorrect correlations. For example, a request that contains the Joe Smith string might be incorrectly correlated with a request that contains the Joe Brown string.
- URL rewriting for execution
- Specifies how web addresses (URLs) are rewritten during test execution.
When correlating data, the test generator replaces part of a URL request
string with a value that the server returned in response to a previous
request.
- Automatic (default): The test generator automatically determines when rewriting the entire URL during substitution will facilitate test execution.
- On: Select to rewrite URLs in every instance of data correlation. This produces larger tests that take longer to run. Try this setting if your tests fail unexpectedly.
- Off: Select to manually correlate the instances where URL rewriting is needed. This setting might cause execution errors.
Note: To turn data correlation
off entirely or to set whether names are automatically generated for
data correlation references, click , and click the Data Correlation tab.
Data correlation types
To access the preference settings for types of data correlation, click , and click the Data Correlation Types tab.
- Data Correlation Types
- Specify when to generate data correlation constructs. With the Automatic setting, the test generator creates the required constructs where needed. If the test does not contain the required constructs, change the setting to On, which will always perform data correlation. If tests do not require a specific construct, select Off, which has the additional benefit of improving performance on subsequent test generation.