Web Performance & Load Testing

Challenge It is paramount that the products developed by eResearch are invariably accessible to university researchers. Consequently, it is necessary to regularly monitor and test the performance of these systems and provide solutions for the user when problems arise.

eResearch: Product Enhancement Through Maintentence, Automation &Testing.

Deployment Automation

Challenge Automating manual processes is a best practice as it can increase the efficiency of the development team, enhance product release quality, and reduce potential errors in deployment.

Solution

Alison Summerford [email protected]

Strengthening current deployment processes involved:

Performance Maintenance

Solution Load tests provide valuable data about system performance. Developing a load test and automating its execution involves: ● Defining clear testing goals to aid in creating accurate user scenarios. ● Contemplating and re-creating user scenarios within a web test. ● Creating and implementing load tests to measure and analyze performance objectives. ● Constructing an optimal schedule and automating load test executions. ● Collecting data from load test results and displaying them in a meaningful way, while noting and investigating outliers .

Technology ● Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 ● Web Performance Tests

Challenge The eResearch Regulatory Management (ERRM) system is upgrading to a new version of the vendor software, Click Portal 6.2. ERRM needs to maintain expected levels of performance after the upgrade. Pre-existing U-M client-side code must work with the upgraded vendor software.

Solution Document jQuery changes between current version used and new version used, and investigate whether those changes break functionality in eResearch Regulatory Management code base.

Managing Releases

Challenge The eResearch team produces releases of custom code for their Animal Management (AM) and Regulatory Management (RM) products on a regular basis. These releases must be routinely applied to the Test environment.

● Enhancing the functionality of an existing build tool by developing a menu to expand deployments to different eResearch product lines.

Solution Managed regular AM and RM product releases by creating and deploying patches using vendor provided software. This process requires precision and attention to detail to minimize error and team downtime.

Technology Technology ● Process Studio 6.1.3 ● jQuery API /JavaScript

● Developing new targets using MSBuild to automate patch deployment and copy static HTML files between servers.

● Automating SSRS report migration through creation of new targets for additional product lines.

Technology ● Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 ● Team Foundation Server 2012 ● MSBuild