As a follow up to my previous post about Apache’s Jmeter, today I will go over using the Jmeter proxy component to record your activities in Firefox and make a test plan. First thing we need to keep in mind as we build this plan, is our goal of actually simulating users. Sure, we could spin up a simple http sampler, setup a 40 thread group, and tell it to loop 100 times, but would this really simulate user load? Real users have pauses between their actions, they may use your site search with a variety of keywords, or they may just wander aimlessly. You also may notice trends in your log files, where you have 2 or more different general types of users. Lets setup a scenario today to simulate 2 of your theoretical user groups defined as follows: Your site has an average of 100 concurrent users 65% of your users follow scenario A 35% of your users follow scenario B
Source:Apache's Jmeter Part II - recording a test script with the proxy component
admin Alagad Alagad
I was really excited to have the opportunity to attend the 360 Flex conference in Indianapolis this past week. For those that don’t know 360 Flex is a medium size conference that focuses on the developer community and generally fosters a great deal of social communication.
At 360 Flex adobe announced that their Flex Builder product would undergo a name change. (Read more here) The new name, ‘Flash Builder’, is intended to reduce confusion about what the product does and the platform it runs on. The underlying Flex sdk will still maintain the ‘Flex’ naming convention.
Source:360 Flex Wrap Up
admin Alagad Alagad
Unless you live in a cave, you know that in the last few days another Object Oriented (OO) vs. procedural debate has flared up. I thought this would be a great opportunity to discuss an attitude I have seen from some developers that mirrors the attitude I saw in quite a few people in my previous career.
For those who do not know, before becoming a developer, I spent 14 years as a paramedic. One similarity I have noticed between my former and current careers is that you can never know enough. There is always something new you can learn to make you better at your job. Another similarity is that if you ever stop learning, well, then the job has passed you by.
I found that the best medics are the ones who would critique a call when it was done and try to find where they could have performed better and work on improving those skills. I would like to think I was one of those medics. Regardless of the outcome of the call, I always found at least one area where I did not preform as well as I may have wanted. Its easy to look at the patient outcome as the sole indicator of how the call went, but rarely was that a true portrayal of how the call went.
Source:Throwing Down the Guantlet
admin Alagad Alagad
Last week I found myself at the annual cf.Objective() conference in Minneapolis, MN. Being that this was my first time to attend a conference like this, I was unsure what to expect or what the experience would mean to me in the end. Upon arriving at the Hyatt Regency (lovely hotel by the way), I immediately noticed there were several developer types sitting around in the lobby. At this point it also occurred to me that some of my Alagad compatriots might be two feet from me and I wouldn’t know it. I had never met any of them in person except for my long time friend Jeff Chastain. As it turned out, one of them was an Alagad guy. How was I to know Jared is a big, burly, biker type? Let’s just say his Facebook picture must be old. Very old. This same process continued in a nice "for.each" loop until I had met each of the guys with one notable exception. I think I would have recognized Doug Hughes without any help at all. I’m not sure why, I just would have.
Source:Cf.Objective() - Musings From a First Timer
admin Alagad Alagad
With all of the recent talk regarding object oriented development in ColdFusion, a common theme appears with developers attempting to make the jump that I have seen many times in the past. You see comments like “where are the OO tutorials” or “where can I find an OO book”. The problem that people don’t seem to grasp here is that object oriented development is not something that you can just follow a check list for and be an expert at. There is no step A, step B, now you have a world class object oriented application. Imagine a carpenter who only has a hammer in his toolbox. This carpenter can get quite a bit done with just that one tool, but to him, everything looks like a nail. This is where procedural development is very useful and practical for getting things done. For this carpenter, the hammer can take care of quite a few tasks - “hammering” them out quickly - just maybe not in the best way possible.
Source:No Object Oriented Cookbooks Here
admin Alagad Alagad
Adobe just release Adobe Flash Builder 4 code name ‘Gumbo’ and Flash
Catalyst on their labs website. What are doing here? Go grab it at:
http://labs.adobe.com/
You need more persuasion? Here is some semi-accurate information on
all the new features:
Flash Builder 4 (formally Flex Builder)
While the layout of the application built on the Eclipse platform will
largely go unchanged.
There are a few new trinkets worth checking out.
The new Flash Builder 4 has a new service inspector panel. The tool
should largely replace the need for a third party web debugging
proxies like Charles.
Flash Builder 4 has a new unit testing panel. Gumbo has engulfed the
popular opensource Fluint unit testing framework and supports
additional popuplar unit testing frameworks.
Source:Adobe Flash Builder 4 'Gumbo' and Flash Catalyst In the Wild
admin Alagad Alagad
A while back I wrote an Adobe Air Application that simulates multi-touch events. The goal of the application is to assist developers in their own development of multi-touch applications knowing that they might not have access to multi-touch hardware or that they might find a simulator more efficiant for testing during development. The core benefit to using SimTouch is the transparent background allowing the application developer to have a better grasp of what he/she is ‘touching’.
SimTouch works by simulating touch events and passing that information to other flash applications via a protocal called TUIO. SimTouch uses the same xml format that FlOSC might use to translate OSC message to a TUIO object. SimTouch needs a simple socket server to relay the XML Socket message between applications. Typically on port 3000.
Source:SimTouch Multi-touch Simulator
admin Alagad Alagad
As promised, attached is the presentation I just finished up at cf.Objective this year. This presentation was on using object oriented techniques and design patterns to take code reuse to the next level. The premise here was to go beyond custom tags and user defined functions which are the norm for many ColdFusion developers and start to think about creating reusable systems.
This is my first time for this presentation, so I appreciate any feedback. If there is enough interest, I would be glad to do this presentation againfor the online CFUG or some other venue.
Thanks again for the opportunity.
UPDATE: This has been posted to SlideSix now …. http://slidesix.com/view/Taking-Code-Reuse-to-a-Higher-Level
Source:cf.Objective 2009 - Taking Code Reuse to a Higher Level
admin Alagad Alagad
Everyone test’s their web sites before going live (right??), even if it just means that you click on the site after pushing it to production, but how do you simulate the large user count your production environment may see? Apache’s Jakarta Project has a product called JMeter that fits this bill nicely, though getting it working can be intimidating. This post will walk you through setting up a basic web site test and where to configure the important bits with the latest JMeter release.
First, of course, you need to go download the latest JMeter binary release:
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/downloads/downloads_jmeter.cgi
On OS X you will need the binary file that ends in .tgz, on Windows grab the binary that ends in .zip. You will also need a JRE setup on your system (to test if you do, drop to a command / terminal prompt, and enter ‘java -version’. If you get ‘bad command or file name’, go hit Sun’s site and download the appropriate JVM / JRE)
Source:Site Testing with Apache's Jakarta JMeter
admin Alagad Alagad
As promised, attached is the presentation I just finished up at cf.Objective this year. This presentation was on using open source tools for web application project management.
This is my first time for this presentation, so I appreciate any feedback. If there is enough interest, I would be glad to do this presentation againfor the online CFUG or some other venue.
This has been posted to SlideSix now …. http://slidesix.com/view/Web-Application-Project-Management-zPQda
Thanks again for the opportunity.
Source:cf.Objective 2009 - Web Application Project Management
admin Alagad Alagad