Saturday, July 30, 2005

ASP.NET 2.0 Callbacks Sample - Inject server controls on the fly without post-back using ASP.NET 2.0 Callbacks

I just added a sample application to my web site.


This sample will demonstrate how we can inject new server controls to a page dynamically without the whole page refresh. Implemented using the ASP.NET 2.0 Callbacks scripts (XMLHTTP).

Please feel free to send me email or comment regarding the sample.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

style.top = 85 doesn't work in Firefox

I spend abour 35 minutes this morning to figure about why element.style.top doesn't work in firefox 1.04. The code is simple, its basically assinging an integer value to the element style top.

el.style.top = 85;

it doesn't work in firefox. Finally, I solved this problem by :

el.style.top = 85 + 'px';

Jobs done !

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Setting up Load Test repository VS 2005

Just a short hint before we can run a load test. Load test requires us to setup a repository. The script for creating the database is stored in
\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\loadtestresultsrepository.sql

Once the repository is created then point the admin test controller to load repository to the created database. To do that, Go to Test > Administer Test Controllers ...

Then away you go ...

Saturday, July 09, 2005

Web Test and Load Test in VS 2005

For the last two days I explored the testing features on the VS 2005, mainly the web test and the load test features. There is still no much help provided on this test feature, but the best I could get is from the beta library http://whidbey.msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp under Visual Studio Team System > Team Test.

Web Test
Now, what can we do with the web test ?
Basically VS allow us to record the steps that we do on the internet explorer and it will be able to replay it. The things that it records is the HTTP request and the query string parameters. What's the advantage of recording it ? is Automated Piloting. Combining it with load test you can simulate several users doing the same things with what you've recorded. Let's imagine a shopping site.
When we go to display all the products, clicking on a specific product to display its details, all of these steps can be recorded and be played back !

Customisation features of the Web Test :

  • You can also add a pre and post request bycreating a class that inherits from the WebTestPlugin
  • Add a validation
  • Add a rule

That's a brief information on the web test.

Load Test

Web Test in it self won't be much meaningful, the power lies when we add the web test to a load test. You can simulate anynumber of contanst number of user or gradually increase number of user piloting the web sites just as you've recorded on the web test.

What are the things that you can customized?

  • Number of users
  • Portion of browser that is used by the user (for example, 45% IE 5.5, 45% IE 6 and 10% Netscape 6.0)
  • Line connection that the user use (start from Modem 28.8k to high speed connection)
  • and others.

What information can you pull out from the load test ? the answer is a lot!

  • Server based performance counter like available memory on the server, CPU utilization, etc.
  • Page based information, such as response time, etc.
  • File by file information, like response time for accessing each file.
  • Request information
  • heaps more...

And guess what is all come with graph like in the performance counter !

I have a post on how to setup the respository for the load testing.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

VS 2005 Beta 2 VS 2003 Side by Side = Stable !

I have started developing an ASP.NET 2.0 application for about a month. Surprisingly, the beta 2 has turn out to be very stable, apart from a small thing that I got to get used to. Like, when I double clicking on the vb.file to bring up the code on the solution explorer, or saving all files using ctrl-shift-s, sometimes it crashes. So, to get around this problem I click on the view code or saving a single file instead. The compilation time is quite fast, even though the code editor and debugger still seems a bit slow.
Just as info, I have been running it side by side with VS 2003 and a local SQL 2000 instance, and everything go smooth... I got a few crashes each day, about 5 to 10 times on the average, which I think is not bad at all. Overall it’s worth to start developing in ASP.NET 2.0.

Monday, July 04, 2005

alive and kickin !

Finally after days researching for the best blog provider I decided to have my blog on Blogger. Thanks to Blogaholix http://82.69.12.18/blogaholix/blogaholixfreeservices.htm for helping me on my final decision :)