SSRS Record & Play testing

In my previous article I wrote about SSRS performance measurement. This time we will take a look at how we can make use of this data for our performance testing itself.

To test we would need the report, report path and the parameters; all of these we can get from the report server itself

Select catalog.name, [Catalog].Path,
ExecutionLog.Parameters
from ExecutionLog with (nolock)
inner join
 Catalog on Catalog.ItemID= ExecutionLog.ReportID

This is like our manual tests being recorded, lets see how we can use this for replaying this rest.

As you know, we can access SSRS reports directly from  the server using reportServer web service URL. Using this URL we can pass query strings too!

<iframe height="100px" width=100%" src="http://172.16.150.29/ReportServer/Pages/ReportViewer.aspx?#ReportPath/ReportName#&amp;rs:Command=Render&amp;#Parameters#"/>

Use excel to import the results and use =CONCATENATE(A2,B2,C2,D2,"""/>")  in excel to generate this HTML code. Now copy these line and place it between HTML tags and your page which can open all reports in one go is ready.

Open this HTML page from multiple machines or tabs; so that it generates sufficient load. Use report server ExecutionLog view to measure the performance of your test.

Very good UML Video tutorial

A very nice UML Video tutorial to start with.

Tutorial starts with basics and goes all the way. I would recommend you downloading Visual Paradigm for UML along http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/vpuml/. With this tutor you can learn both UML as well as the tool.  VP can do a lot more, but very good start for both UML and visual paradigm is this.

Special thanks to PatriaLivreBrasil.

*don’t go by the first few videos, it might look slow and boring. Rest of the tutorials are really good.

Why live writer is better than MS Word for blogs

Well this is the first article, as well as the test article for using Windows Live Writer for blogger. At first glance I found following advantages

• Its WYSIWYG – Yeah, it uses your blog theme, CSS, font… everything
• You have a preview and option to edit the source code
• Finally a neat HTML, doesn’t crap like Word does
• Support for publish scheduling
• Easy way to publish photos – still testing… ( tested, working fine)

• Loads faster and doesn’t have many unwanted options.
• easy to load previous entries and edit
• Easy to label articles

Anyway I strongly recommend downloading and using Windows Live Essentials

How to disable Symantec Device Manager and access your disabled USB drive

Well, its going to be interesting! Symantec might be installed on your office machine and its controlled by policy, so it might be blocking you from connecting any USB device. You can enable it at your own risk, provided your are a machine admin.

open services.msc and look for Symantec Management Client Service.
Go to properties.
Open the logon tab.
Give your current network credentials.
Now go to Task Manger and kill smc.exe.

Now on Symantec will be running in your account and you are the boss. You can Stop/Start/Kill it at any time.

If you dont want to see the service running again, dont give your right password in logon. Service wouldnt start now on, because of the logon failure.

Disclaimer: I am not using the above method, neither i am recommending this to you. You are on your own buddy!

Search Everything and dont index anything

I was using Google desktop, Copernicus, Windows Desktop search on my laptop for file search. What i have realized is that i dont need them always. Amount of CPU/Mem/Drive it takes for indexing is not worth it.Most of the times, i dont search for my documents on my machine because i know the location it many times.

Documents i get from others are in mails. So i use a tool which searches for documents just by file name, and dont use big indexes and way faster than the native windows file search.

Search Everything can search for files and gives you all the windows shell options. This is one of the Tool i found recently and love using it and reccomend others.

Well for mails i use Windows Desktop Search, because of its seemless integration with outlook. But i make sure that i dont use it for anything other than mails.

Download Search Everything

Launchy - No more start menu navigation

Most of my work begins with Windows+Space key. Thats the shortcut I have assigned for the Launchy tool.
What lauchy does is it indexes shortcuts on your start menu, plus some other applications.
I have bunch of stand alone applications that i use often and i have added this to the indexing catalog. You can type and look for the application, and Launch. Once installed you would never go back to start menu or any applicatoin folder to launch.

I even use it on my development debug folder, So that i dont waste time in looking for an application to launch.

Download Launchy