Performance testing in the ocean

  Vacation by cruise ship is pleasant. You got to see beautiful places, eat great food and experience fun events -- all for a low price.  I am not working for a cruise line but I love taking cruise so much that I can't help speaking like one :-)   Cruise is not without its problems, one of them is,  internet access.  We are not talking about checking internet every hour or every minute for news, emails etc.  After all, you are on the cruise ship for fun.  Many guests do need to share their pictures, stories with their friends and stay connected.

   So what's the issue with internet access on a cruise ship? It's slow and expensive - some goes like $0.75/min.  Internet access in the land goes through cable, DSL or wireless links,  but on a cruise ship it will have to go through the satellite link, that's the fundamental reason why it's slow and yet expensive. I can understand this.   But I can't understand why the login process is so slow -  it can take dozens of seconds.  The servers needed for login process are all on the ship, the information needed is simple - just username and password.  So my guess is that the server software is not thoroughly tested for their performance.

    If you are wondering whether there is a need to do performance testing on a cruise ship,  consider the following facts:

• There are close to 4000 guests on ship,  many with smartphones, tablet PCs or laptops,
• Many probably will try internet access between two events (for example, the time between two shows),   
• users have to log in and log off multiple times -  login to check out some emails, go offline to avoid the high per-minute charge, compose responses and log back in to send them. 

    I took a quick look at how I would performance-test it.  The login process itself is pretty simple  - just sending the following HTTP POST data to the server (UserID and Password changed for anomity).

 //the following are the HTTP POST data sent to server during login
 FRM_VERB:FRM_VERB_LOGIN  
 hdnPageName:WIRELESS_LOGIN  
 UserID:jsmith  
 Pass:abc123  
 Image1.x:18  
 Image1.y:30  

    Note that there are 4 hidden fields in the form.

    If I were testing it using NetGend platform,  I could use the following script to test it out.  In a nutshell, here is what the script does:

• In userInit() part,  it preloads a csv files,  each of its rows contains a username and password. 
• In VUSER() part,  it will get the login page.  Then it will "fill" the form with a pair of username and password read from the csv file and do the "login".
• Finally it will logout.

 function userInit() {  
      var db = fromCSVFile("users.txt");  
      var index = 0;  
 }  
 function VUSER() {  
      action(http,"http://10.10.10.10/login.asp");  
      a = db[index];  
      index ++;  
      info.UserID = a[0];  
      info.Pass = a[1];  
      http.POSTData = fillHtmlForm(http.replyBody, info);  
      action(http,"http://10.10.10.10/login.asp"); 
      x = randNumber(30000, 600000); //sleep randomly from 30 to 600 seconds (10min)
      sleep(x);
      action(http,"http://10.10.10.10/logoff.asp");
 }  

   Observant readers may find that it doesn't deal with the "hidden" fields when it sends the HTTP POST  data for login. That's because the function "fillHtmlForm()" will take care of hidden parameters so users  don't have to set up complex regular expression (or something equivalent) to capture the hidden parameters and put it back in the HTTP POST Data.

   The need for performance testing is everywhere,  you just can't escape it - even in the middle of the ocean.