SharePoint 2013 Load & Performance Testing
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In this post I will explain how you can do web performance tests in SharePoint 2013. In the same way you can detect/prevent any issue or problem on your SharePoint Solutions doing an exhaustive analysis using tools like MSOCAF (Microsoft SharePoint Online Code Analysis Framework), you can verify performance and stress abilities on your SharePoint applications by creating web performance and load tests. In this first post I will show you how to create a Web Performance Test for SharePoint 2013 using Visual Studio 2013 (VS 2013) Update 1 in a SharePoint 2013 CloudShare environment.
Creating a Web Performance Test in VS 2013
First thing you must know about Web Performance Tests in VS 2013 is that you can only create them if you have VS 2013 Ultimate. Indeed, I recommend you to review the Visual Studio editions comparison created by Microsoft where you can verify that the Web Performance and Load Testing capability is only available for Visual Studio Ultimate. In order to create a Web Test for SharePoint 2013 in VS 2013:
- Run VS 2013 and create a project of type “Web Performance and Load Test Project”. You can find this project type in the “Test” category in the “New project” window in VS 2013.
- Once the Web Test project is created, the “Web Performance Test Editor” displays with a blank Web Test.
- In order to create a Web Test for a SharePoint 2013 site, just click the “Adding recording” button in the actions panel available in the Web Test Editor.
- VS 2013 launches a blank Internet Explorer Window where the test recorder panel is displayed on the left side. Type the URL of the SharePoint site for which you want to create the Web Test so VS 2013 starts the recording of each web request done.
- Perform some actions in your SharePoint 2013 in order to generate new web requests to be included as part of the Web Test. For instance, upload two documents to the site’s default document library. Verify that the recording panel is registering each web request done. You can also have a detailed view of each web request and evaluate the QueryString and Form Post parameters included on it.
- Once you are ready, to end the Web Test recording, just click the “Stop” button on the recording panel.
- Back to VS 2013, the Dynamic Parameter detection window is displayed. As its name indicates, this window detects and register all the Dynamic Parameter found in the definition of the Web Test.
- Due to the dynamic nature of SharePoint web requests, VS 2013 will detect some Dynamic Parameters that can be promote as Web Test Parameters so you can re-use the Web Test created for other SharePoint sites.
- Once the process of generating the Web Test ends, you’ll see in the Web Test Editor the whole sequence of web requests made that have been recorded as part of the Web Test.
- Finally, for each web request included in the Web Test you can inspect all the defined parameters (QueryString and FORM POST parameters) including the dynamic parameters detected by VS 2013.
And that’s all in this first post about how to create a Web Performance Test for SharePoint 2013 using VS 2013. In coming posts, we will learn how to perform the execution of the Web Test in order to obtain a first insight on the performance of our SharePoint 2013 site.
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