Best practices

To get the best out of a load test on an Oracle Forms application, the following processes are advised:

Design

  • Enable the component naming option on the application server.

  • Enable all the Oracle Forms options in the NeoLoad project.

  • Close all browser instances before starting a new recording.

  • Wherever possible, input user actions in the Oracle Forms applet using the keyboard.

  • Input user actions in the applet slowly.

  • Limit the number of actions carried out by a Virtual User. If necessary, create several Virtual User profiles that each carry out a separate series of actions.

  • Rename the pages during the recording using names that identify the relevant actions carried out in the applet.

  • Quit the Oracle Forms applet correctly before ending the recording. You are advised to click on Action > Exit in the applet rather than close the browser.

  • Make sure that the Oracle Forms requests are correctly identified and decoded.

  • Validate the key requests in the scenario.

  • Use as few validations and Variable Extractors as possible, especially on large-size XML responses.

Validation

  • Configure NeoLoad so that it does not error-flag the HTTP 404 response code already present in the recording.

  • Play the page think times.

  • Validate all the scenario Virtual Users and check that they run correctly with no errors.

Runtime

  • Set the scenario Population stop policy as Indeterminate: allow all Virtual Users to end their actions.

  • Warm up the server: run a few tests with a small number of simultaneous Virtual Users to warm up the server before submitting it to a heavy load.