Exclusive: e-Test 8.0 earns very good marks

With the latest release of e-Test Suite, Empirix continues its tradition of providing Web site developers with point-and-click simplicity that makes creating and executing test scripts a breeze. However, the new version only partially addresses one of my major gripes about the 7.0 incarnation: the lack of an integrated scripting language to allow for true customization and extensibility of the test scripts.

Version 8.0 introduces a more scalable, Java-based client simulation agent that accepts Java source code as its scripting input. Although this is an improvement over the previous version (which did not provide access to script source code), the feature is still not fully integrated. For example, there is no code editor within the e-Tester script-recording tool. Customers must use an external IDE, such as the one being developed as part of the open source Eclipse project, to edit the code, which is created in parallel with the proprietary e-Tester script code.

That criticism aside, e-Test Suite 8.0 delivers some attractive if incremental improvements over the previous release. The most important of these is the complete rewrite of the e-Load UI. e-Load is Empirix’s automated workload-generation service. Using scripts created in the product’s e-Tester recording tool, e-Load allows you to simulate multiple, concurrent virtual users for stress testing and more.

In its previous incarnation e-Load was a native 32-bit Windows app that ran locally on the system with e-Tester and the rest of the suite. Version 8.0 effectively decouples the UI from the underlying workload engine, allowing you to access, configure, and execute workload packages from any PC via a Web browser.

The ramifications of this change are significant. Not only does it make e-Test more scalable (separating business logic from UI logic is always a good thing); it also makes e-Load a multiuser environment. Multiple users can now connect to the workload agent server and observe, in real time, the results of the currently executing scenario. They can also start their own independent scenario and thus share the agent server’s workload engine. The advantages, in terms of collaborative opportunities and the ability to share feedback within a group, are obvious.

I took the new e-Load for a test-drive on my own development workstation. Using an embedded Web server running off of port 8088, I was able to access the new e-Load UI through IE and quickly schedule a simple test scenario I had created previously in e-Tester. The UI itself was easy to navigate, making good use of tabs, toolbars, and various dynamic elements. Clearly defined field labels and logical element groupings helped guide me through the configuration process.

When I was ready to execute the scenario I simply clicked the big green button labeled Run Test, itself a dynamic UI element (it won’t work until it detects that a viable test configuration has been defined). I was then presented with a grid of active virtual users where I could observe as the user count was ramped up according to the specifications I provided. Other than a few UI blemishes (some of the Web page graphic elements didn’t display properly at 1,600 by 1,200 pixels) and the occasional required Web page refresh, the UI was clean and generally well thought out.