The following outlines the steps I took to demonstrate how easy it is to setup and execute HTTP load tests.

Setting up an HTTP Load Test Project

1. Select File | New Project
2. Click the HTTP Load Testing Template
3. Click Ok
4. The Project Wizard appears and you can simply click Finish which will give you a project that looks like the image to the right.

As you can see the project has several nodes by default.

• Stations: represents the machines that will be conducting the tests. Master is my current machine, the one I'm running TestComplete on.
• Tasks: is the HTTP traffic you’re interested in testing.
• Tests: allows you to assign tasks to various stations for test execution.
• Scripts: is for manually writing test automation.

Setting up Remote Agent

The next step is to setup the machines you’ll use for load testing under the Stations node of your project.

1. Right click the Stations node and select Add New... (you should see the dialog to the right)
2. Enter the IP address of your Remote Agent machine, in my case that’s 192.168.1.104.
3. Click Ok

This will give you a new node under Stations, "VPC" which is your VM, or the machine running Remote Agent.

Record an HTTP Task

1. Configure Internet explorer to use TestComplete as a proxy allowing it to monitor and record HTTP traffic. For IE you can do that from the Connections tab of the Internet Options dialog setting the proxy to localhost on port 9999. For Firefox open the Tools|Options dialog and look on the Advanced page, under the Network tab.
2. Click the record button on the TestComplete toolbar and once recording begins click the "Record and HTTP Task" button (circled in red below):
   
3. This will bring up the Select Load Testing dialog where you can decide to record a new HTTP traffic or append it to an existing task.
4. Once you click OK you can begin recording HTTP traffic by simply using your browser. TestComplete will record the HTTP traffic and add it to the task you specified.

Once recorded you can modify the web requests to fit your needs. Here is an example of what the recorded HTTP traffic looks like:

Running HTTP Load Testing

As you can see I’ve configured one virtual user to sent HTTP traffic starting half a second after the Master with a User-Agent of IE6.

Running HTTP Load Testing

Wrap up

Results Using Internet Explorer 7.0.6000.16473

Results Using Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6

These results have been fairly consistent across a number of tests. I'm wondering if there is perhaps a performance penalty for running Firefox from a USB drive? All of these tests were conducted on my laptop.

I'll have test again at the office (also wireless) tomorrow and see how things compare. Of course, I'll probably install Firefox for a true apples-to-apples comparison.

As you can see I use the "undocked IDE" meaning my code editor is free floating, not docked into the top main toolbar window. I actually like the docked IDE but I prefer to do everyday work using the undocked layout to make sure it's always getting tested.

Now About the Perf...

Lately, there's been a lot of effort put into improving the Delphi IDE's UX and I wanted to comment briefly that in the past week alone we've made some great progress. For example, there have been recent improvements in:

• IDE flicker (now nearly flicker free)
• Desktop switching performance
• GDI resource management
• Moving controls on the form designer via the keyboard
• Form designer grid repaint issues
• Compiler time stamp access (thanks to Andreas Hausladen)
• VCL control painting (thanks to Pierre le Riche)
• VCL control data handling performance
• FastCode routines added to the RTL (btw, a huge thanks to the whole FastCode crew who contribute to this great project benefiting us all)

 1 type
 2   TMyForm = class(TForm)
 3   protected
 4     procedure CreateParams(var Params: TCreateParams); override;
 5   end;
 6 
 7 ...
 8 
 9 procedure TMyForm.CreateParams(var Params: TCreateParams);
10 begin
11   inherited;
12   // This only works on Windows XP and above
13   if CheckWin32Version(5, 1) then
14     Params.ExStyle := Params.ExStyle or WS_EX_COMPOSITED;
15 end;
16 

You should be able to use this on any 32-bit version of Delphi as long as your app is running on Windows XP.

The downside is that depending on your application this change could have rather serious performance implications during a window resize particularly with aligned controls. The upside of course is that it's flicker free!

I've read that there may be some issues related to using this window style with GDI+ so be sure to look for that if it affects you.

There is no comment on the MSDN as to how this works under Windows Vista but I'd guess there may be some differences.

The problem I mentioned here has been addressed with the release of Update 2. If you're in a situation where you're using readonly files that are part of your Delphi project this could significantly speed up your compile times.

While browsing the newsgroups I ran into a thread where a user had commented that BDS 2006 compiled his application incredibly slowly. A while ago I'd had a discussion with Mark Edington our resident performance maverick about this issue and it turns out that it's a good reminder of the cost of raising an exception or in this case lots of them.

Since Mark debugged this issue he kindly provided me with a short write up of the specifc problem, it's solution and a workaround.

function OpenOSFile(const Name: string): IStream;
begin
  { try opening existing file so that read/write operations are
    possible }
  Result := nil;
  if FileExists(Name) then
  begin
    try
      Result := TOSFileStream.Create(Name, fmOpenReadWrite or 
        fmShareDenyNone);
    except
      on EFOpenError do
        Result := TOSFileStream.Create(Name, fmOpenRead or 
          fmShareDenyWrite);
    end;
  end;
end;

function OpenOSFile(const Name: string): IStream;
var
  Code: Integer;
begin
  Result := nil;
  Code := GetFileAttributes(PChar(Name));
  if (Code <> -1) and (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY and Code = 0) then
  begin
    if (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_READONLY and Code = 0) then
      Result := TOSFileStream.Create(Name, fmOpenReadWrite or
fmShareDenyNone)
    else
      Result := TOSFileStream.Create(Name, fmOpenRead or
fmShareDenyWrite);
  end;
end;