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ProAct Wins Major Deal with a Little Help from their
Friends |
ProAct Technologies Corporation provides applications for managing and delivering employee benefits programs for health and wealth. Their applications work with major ERP and HRMS systems, integrating into any portal architecture. ProAct has developed enterprise-wide employee relationship management software for Fortune 1000 firms in all major industries.
In order to secure an important sale of an HR application to a major global publisher, ProAct needed to deliver a proof-of-concept to their prospect. They had to prove their application would work for the publishing house's specific environment before they would buy it. So testing the solution's configuration and use for the publisher before going in to do the proof-of-concept was critical to the win.
ProAct needed pre-production load testing done on an array of transaction types within the application; and they needed the testing done fast, but lacked the in-house expertise and manpower to do the work. ProAct turned to Rational Test Bureau partner RTTS for help. RTTS, a New York City based IT application and architecture testing firm, has distinguished itself as a top provider of automated testing for Fortune 500 corporations and had already proven itself an effective testing service on many previous engagements with ProAct. RTTS' world-class level of testing expertise and knowledge made them a welcome candidate for participation in the Rational Test Bureau program.
Rational Test Bureau partners deliver access to Rational's solution for functional, performance, reliability testing and runtime analysis, Rational Suite™ TestStudio®, combined with the expert testing services of our partners. Businesses and organizations using the Test Bureau don't have to purchase, install, or learn how to implement software tests. Many companies whose software is their livelihood find the services advantageous when faced with urgent projects coupled with resource constraints, even if they have in-house testing capabilities.
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ProAct was in exactly that position of
having an urgent project and resource
constraints when their Vice President of
Professional Services, Carlo DeMarco, went
to RTTS for assistance. The scope of the
testing included both load and functional
testing, to ensure a flawless
proof-of-concept for the publishing house.
ProAct's software for the publishing
house had to meet these performance
standards:
• Handle up to 500 concurrent users
•
Fully load any one page within 21 seconds
• Fully load any single object on any page
within 10 seconds.
• Perform up to 5,000 page requests per hour
•
Editing and updating employee mailing
information
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Updating and retrieving employee paycheck
information,
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Retrieving against a logic expression for
medical benefit information
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Accessing 401k information from an external
site
•
Proving the single sign-on capability via
Netegrity's SiteMinder® worked with the
application
For RTTS project lead Jon Harris, Rational
Suite TestStudio was the testing tool of
choice for their client because it performs
functional and load testing simultaneously
and allows the virtual users to do more than
one thing at once, the way people use
applications in real life. The tool is
highly scalable and creates runtime analysis
and code-coverage metrics in the background,
correlating bugs to the code causing them
and letting the RTTS testers know what code
was exercised during testing. This meant
that Harris' RTTS team could test ProAct's
business critical application with
confidence in their ability to find any bugs
that could keep ProAct from winning its
sales engagement with the publishing house. |
RTTS staffers conducted the tests in their
lab using their own equipment, saving ProAct
from assigning space, reallocating existing
equipment, or purchasing additional
equipment to run the tests. RTTS set up the
load testing to ramp up to 500 concurrent
users by using five machines, each running
between 100 and 150 Virtual Testers. A
virtual tester or virtual user emulates the
complex actions of a person using an
application.
The machines used were configured with
Pentium® III Processors, 1.2 gigabyte hard
drives, .5 gigabyte of memory, LAN cards,
and fiber optic T1 connections to the
Internet. During the testing, RTTS used
Rational Suite TestStudio's test management
interface to continuously monitor the
machines for adequate CPU and memory
resources, and to ensure the T1 connection
was not saturated. The testing configuration
included third-party software that the
publishing house uses, so that ProAct could
guarantee their solution would function with
it.
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The tests simulated users logging-into the
system and executing the various types of
representative transactions. According to
RTTS' Harris, Rational Suite TestStudio's
graphic scheduler was a powerful asset in
testing the transactions under varied user
loads. "Using Rational Suite TestStudio's
graphic scheduler, we were able to schedule
users to run different transactions and
different mixes of transactions to truly
simulate real life," said Harris. "Most
other products on the market today allow
each virtual user to run only one script."
Throughout the testing process, RTTS testers
recorded scripts of virtual user actions at
critical points as they scaled-up in
increments to 500 concurrent users. Between
each test they verified that everything
executed correctly, and that they had the
correct volume of transactions. But then a
problem occurred: something was getting in
the way of scaling up to the maximum
required performance level.
Thanks to the runtime analysis capability
that Rational Suite TestStudio provides
during testing, the RTTS testers were able
to pinpoint the cause to an
information-sharing problem between two
third-party software components required for
the proof-of-concept. The problem in the
compatibility of the other vendors' products
was keeping ProAct's application from
scaling as required.
The RTTS testers solved the problem after
they discovered a pattern of error messages
occurring during login and after the first
few pages of testing. By looking at response
times and error messages, and after
conducting still further tests with Rational
Suite TestStudio on the third-party server
software, RTTS was able to narrow the
problem to the way one third-party
application shared information with the
required third-party server. After
consulting on the project, the server
software vendor issued a patch that resolved
the problem, allowing the test of ProAct's
application to immediately and successfully
scale and be tested at 500 concurrent users
within the assigned performance constraints. |
Rational Suite TestStudio performed as promised for RTTS and RTTS enabled ProAct
to be confident of their application's performance during the proof-of-concept.
ProAct in turn conducted a successful proof-of-concept, a critical
accomplishment that motivated ProAct's client to purchase the application. It
was a winning situation all-around, with particular benefits for ProAct. "We
couldn't undertake this kind of testing on our own," said Carlo DeMarco, Vice
President, Professional Services for ProAct Technologies. "RTTS and the Rational
Test Bureau Program saved us valuable time, manpower, and resources and allowed
us to concentrate on what we do best-develop world class enterprise-wide
software for employee resource management."
"This scenario clearly illustrates the reasons we created the Rational Test
Bureau," said Bill Chandler, Rational Software's Program Manager for the bureau.
"Here you had ProAct, a company that realized the importance of testing, yet
didn't have adequate expertise, manpower, or infrastructure to do it themselves.
Additionally, they were up against a tight deadline and delivery of the
proof-of-concept was critical to their winning a large order for their products.
RTTS, like all of our Test Bureau Partners, was uniquely positioned to provide
timely, cost-effective testing services using Rational's industry-leading
testing platform."
This article has been re-printed with permission from Rational Software.
Copyright January 2002
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