Oracle performance

Running a script

Once you have finished recording, you are ready to define and run a test scenario.

Make sure that the Forms application link points to the correct location (see Preparing to use Forms2test) The host and port number of the Oracle Forms application link will be used for the performance test.

Warning: You can change to Forms application link to performance test other Forms environments. However, make sure that the module revisions are equal to the module revision used during script creation.

Select the Run tab(1) and click the Schedule button(2) for each script that should be included into the test scenario.

The Schedule Script wizard opens to define in three steps (1) the user load, (2) the ramp-up behavior and (3) the maximum number of user sessions.

The first step lets you define the number of virtual users to start within a given time frame



The next step is to define the ramp-up bavior within the time frame of step 1.



You can let the system determine when to start the users. For example, when you start 100 virtual users every 1800 seconds randomly. The the system will start 100 user sessions every 30 minutes randomly.

The next step, and for scripts without an iteration the last step, is to define the maximum number of users to simulate. When you do not define a maximum (default) the system will start the number of users each time frame until the target goal of the test is reached. However, when you define a maximum the system will not simulate more users than specified in this step for that script.



The last step only applies to script with an iteration. With this step you can define how many times the iteration should be repeated and the time to wait before starting the next iteration.



Warning: Starting many virtual users within a small time frame will definitely overload the application server. Schedule a reasonable load behavior.

Test Goal

After defining the load behavior for each script individually (note the checkbox ticks for each script included into the test scenario), you should define the overall test goal. You can define the test goal with the Goal Wizard. To open the Goal Wizard, press the edit button.



In three steps you can define the testing goal. First, you have to specify the goal type. Then the total number of users to simulate or the test duration and finally the maximum number of active (simultaneous) user sessions.

For the goal type you can choose between the number of users to simulate or a time based performance test.



When you select a virtual user bound test you have to select the number of users to simulate for the next step. When you select a run-time bound test you have to specify the test run-time. Note that when either test goal is reached, the system will not terminate immediate but wait for the active users to stop gracefully. This is the ramp-down phase of the test.



In the last step of the test goal wizard you specify the maximum number of active (simultaneous) users.



Note: Forms2test allows you to purchase a license to simulate as many users as you need to effectively test your application. For the (full functional) evaluation version, however, you are licensed to simulate a maximum of 10 active users only.

Fail on Forms messages

During the performance test Oracle Forms might not always run correctly. Allthough Oracle Forms does not always throw an error, you can fail a virtual user on specific database (ORA-xxx), Forms (FRM-xxx) and Headstart (QMS-xxx) messages. Select the fail on message button (2) on the Settings tab (1) as shown below, and define one or more message prefixes.

For the example below, a virtual user will fail on all database messages, all Forms messages that starts with FRM-92 and the Forms message FRM-93000 (Generic internal Exception message).



Before you start the test you should familiarize yourself with the Run tab. While the test is running you can see how the application performs in real time. You can view performance information on the online performance monitors and in tabular form.

The Run tab contains three sections. The Test Suite, The Test Goal and the Test Monitor.

The Test Suite section lets you define the test scenario and view the run status (running, passed and failed) for each script and their transactions together with the performance for the passed transactions and virtual users.



The Test Goal section shows the current testing goal.

The Test Monitor shows four online (graphical) performance monitors together with the overall test statistics for the test scenario.

The following performance monitors are displayed during the test:

Active Users - displays the number of simultaneous running users.

Performance (%) - displays the performance, i.e. the relation between the cumulative recorded response time and cumulative actual response time (see What it means).

Response Delay (ms) – displays the difference between the recorded response times and the actual response times for the last 5 seconds.

Requests / sec. – displays the number of network requests per second for the last 5 seconds.



The following online statistics are displayed during the test:

Elapsed (mm:ss) – The elapsed time for the running test.

Time/Users remaining – The remaining time or virtual users.

Active users – The number of running virtual users.

Users passed/failed – The total number of passed simulated users and the total number of failed users.

Performance – The actual performance.

Response time delay – the average difference between the recorded response time (baseline) and the actual response time in milliseconds for each request over the last 5 seconds.

Total requests (http) – the total number of network requests sent to the application server.

Throughput – the total number of bytes sent to and received from the application server.

Status – current status of the load test: running, stopping, aborting and stopped.

Now you are ready to actually run the performance test.

Forms2test has two run modes. Interactive (GUI) and batch (silent) mode. Batch or silent mode is required to schedule a performance test as a background job. You can run a performance test in batch mode using the operating system script console.bat. This script is located in the bin folder of the forms2test software. Before running the test in batch mode you should first define you test scenario using the graphical interface.

For running the performance test in interactive (GUI) mode you have to press the Start button on the Run tab.



Note that you can stop and abort the test at any time. If you stop the test no more new user sessions are started but the system will wait for the running user sessions to complete gracefully. However, when you abort the test no more new user sessions are started and the running sessions are terminated forcefully.

Tip: During the test open the Oracle Forms application from a browser and click through the application to experience the real performance under load.