loadrunner widgets - how do they match? - widget

I am going to loadtest an application that is built using wickets framework and consists of several widgets/small applications within the main application.
Does Loadrunner support this kind of application infrastructure in any way?

Not familiar with wickets. Generally LoadRunner intercepts network traffic and generate script unless you are using protocols that based on browser like truclient, GUI and etc. If you know what network protocol used in that framework, LoadRunner should work.

Related

What cross-browser technology do you use in your web applications to manipulate on client machines?

(I have a problem with Google Chrome improvements that will drop support for my current solutions.)
I work on project where I move desktop system to an Intranet web application.
The crucial requirements are:
to move desktop system to a web application
to reproduce every single functionality from the desktop system in the webapp
While 95% of work requires creating casual web application, there is one thing which is non-standard to handle: my application must perform some actions on the client computer. These includes:
connecting with libraries
launching desktop apps
file manipulation in background
The example scenario is to integrate my system with some machine in the lab. I have to integrate my web application with drivers on client computer via DLL (desktop app did this, so my app have to do this as well).
Theoretically scenarios of the desktop actions may vary and I just want to implement some interface that will handle all the "client-machine" job the desktop app has done, so there is no need to work on every single scenario (but of course every scenario should be tested).
My solution was Java Applet. It worked. But then Google Chrome decided to drop support for NPAPI plugins, so in September'15 Java plugin (and my applet) won't be supported (http://blog.chromium.org/2014/11/the-final-countdown-for-npapi.html).
So my another solution is Java Web Start. It works. But now Google Chrome decided to drop support for background operations of external protocols (https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=348640), so from Google Chrome 45 my Java Web Start solution won't be supported.
(Both above solutions work on Firefox and IE.)
The question:
What other technology can I use to interact with a client machine from my web app?
Other remarks:
I am reluctunt to write my own PPAPI plugin or Chrome Extension - I prefer one solution working on all major browsers.
I know that StackOverflow community does not like discussions about technologies, so please focus on describing possible solution to my problem.
We struggled with a similar problem as we need to connect/access electronic devices over JNI->DLL. The only technology where this is currently possible are applets. Period. (And even that is tricky since certain combinations of browsers/java versions/operating systems do not work or have problems, but this is another story...)
There are web technologies like HTLM5, JScript which can replace some functionalities of applets however in certain scenarios (like yours) there is no current alternative available - and you named some of those:
connecting with libraries like *.dll, *.so etc.
file manipulations
launching applications
And doing that across browsers and operating systems!
Solutions?
Tell your users that certain browsers can't be used (like Chrome and
Opera Next)
Write individual plugins for each browser (which probably is beyond your budget ;-)
Did you consider writing standalone application(s) in form of an executable file? The user must download and run it however e.g. java or plugins also need to be installed. But then there is the security aspect of that (downloading an and executing an executable file) - certainly not an easy decision
Have a look at FireBreath 2 - (just read about it in some posts, however didn't try it)
There are lots of discussions on SO to this topic so take a read:
alternative technologies to replace applets
applet alternative launch from browser
alternatives to java applet to launch microsoft office applications
alternative-java-applet-network-drive-access
what are the alternatives for java applet to launch client programs using chrome
alternative of npapi plugins for flash java applet
python alternative to java applet
npapi alternative for live file editing
... and many, many more!

JayData vs Upshot (crossplatform HTML5 app)

I'm just in the planning phase of developing my iPhone/iPad/Android app.
Basically the app will query data from remote data sources and store it locally. As data management will be the key feature of this app, so the UI isn't an important factory in this case. I decided to develop a HTML5 and JavaScript-based hybrid application and deploy it with PhoneGap/Cordova.
I'm a .NET developer, I use Visual Studio 11 for web development, so I found the Single Page Application template, which uses Upshot.js by default.
By exploring the alternatives, I've found JayData http://jaydata.org library. It seems to me that it's something similar to upshot.js.
Could you share your opinion, which way should I go to build a cross-platform HTML5 application?
Upshot and JayData looks similar but actually they are quite different, which makes your choice easier. There are things however both provides
Both has pros and cons (as everything in life)
Upshot.js is backed by Microsoft and focuses mainly on oData + Knockoutjs support. It is included in Visual Studio. You can query oData endpoints with it using a procedural query language.Upshot supports read/write operations, and also realtime updates.
JayData supports multiple datasources, among them are oData but also device local webSql as well, plus some other providers too. JayData let's you query oData or webSql on the same with, with sime JavaScript functions, so you dont have to learn sql and oData uri syntax. JayData provide read/write operations but realtime updates require a small user code.

Installing an offline html app and data onto an iPad

I am contemplating buying an iPad and am wondering what options I will have for developing an app for personal use ... specifically whether I will be able to do it as an offline browser app. The app currently exists as an Android Java app; it interacts with a large local database (about 3MB) and displays images and text drawn from a very large pool of resources stored locally (about 2GB).
My immediate questions are:
How would I get the files (html/javascript, database, images and text) transferred into the iPad's storage from a Windows PC? With Android this is a simple matter of hooking up via USB and using Windows Explorer. Googling suggests that for an iPad I might have to use an app on Windows called DiskAid, but this costs $25 which seems a bit steep for my simple purpose. Are there free alternatives?
Once the files are installed on the iPad how would I run the html app? On Android this appears to be a matter of keying "file:///sdcard/MyBrowserAppFolder/mybrowserapp.htm" into the browser's address box. Does th iPad browser work in a similar way.
There are two basic kinds of applications that run on iOS.
Mobile designed web applications that are hosted on a server and accessed through Safari or another browser.
Native applications built using Xcode and usually objective-c.
For the latter, you could use the phonegap framework to build an app using existing html and javascript.
My personal advice is to invest the time to learning how to code this up using objective-c. Depending on what format your db is in, importing the structure and data might be trivial. It will take an investment of time, but doing things using the native tools is the best choice for iOS development in my opinion. I was in the same situation (PHP, VB.NET and Javascript developer) and just decided to take the time and learn to do it right. This was a great decision and the development time of a simple to moderate application takes very little time now.
Safari on iOS does not support the URL's of type file:// natively. So you either write your own app, purchase an app or use something like a local web server after jailbreaking.
Alternatively, and if you can verify that the app you have mentioned does what you want to do, then maybe $25 is not so much of a price. Depends on what your time is worth :)
However there are cheaper apps around that allow to transfer and read html via wifi and usb. (Not sure I can name them here)
The USB transfer aka iTunes Filesharing is a standard function that a developer can enable in the info.plist of their app. Many apps use this to transfer data between Computer and iDevice.

GUI Development - Free Tools

We are looking at building a GUI application having the following attributes -
* approx 100 screens
* approx 200 users
* interfaces with 8 different legacy applications (protocols tbd but we are assuming web services will be exposed)
* has a separate data store for storing authentication and authorisation info along with few other information.
We are trying to avoid spending any money on procurement of physical servers, application servers etc.So we thought instead of building a web application , we could develop a standalone GUI based application that could be deployed on users' desktops considering that the users are less and the access to this application is confined to our organisation.
We were thinking of Java Swing as one of the options to consider. Is it a good choice? Please advice on the other options that we need to think about. We thought MS products would involving licensing costs to buy the product hence we are looking at developing the application using some free software tools.
Thanks a lot!
Regards,
V
I really like Swing and have written many applications with it, but I'm not sure the argument that you will get a cheaper solution because you have to procure less physical servers is a good reason for it.
There are other ways to use computational capacity on the client side. For example you could use SmartGWT. With a browser based solution you get easy deployment and have no problems with client-server communications (i.e. no proxy hell). It's possible to get all of this solved with a standalone GUI, but it requires experience and time (== money).
I think a standalone GUI is a good idea if you need a "rich" user experience and tight integration with the native environment. Web apps are generally less snappy and not so well integrated. If it's just about editing data on a server, the standalone GUI does not really have any advantages.
I won't rehash what we talked about in the comments. It seems you are focused on java gui solutions. With that said there are alternatives for developing gui applications with free tools. Just to name a couple, you could develop your client with Adobe Flex or Adobe Air, use python, php or ruby and GTK, or develop a windows GUI app using c# if your target os is windows. Similar to Air, Microsoft Silverlight is an option. Java is not the only solution.
Many Java gui apps are written using swing. The major competitor to Swing has long been SWT which is used for eclipse and by IBM. Javafx is a newer/alternative platform Sun/Oracle is behind, you should also look at. To be complete, you should also take a look at qt jambi that lets you develop in java against the Qt framework.

Blackberry web services

I am looking to expose an existing app as web service for use on the Blackberry. So I have some questions around the blackbery and its use of web services.
I am wonderings is it possible to use Restful web services (using JSON as the payload) on the blackbery or is SOAP the only web services the balckbery can do?
In recent times I have used the Jersey framework for web services in normal web apps and I think this would suit my current requirements,just need to know if this is possible on the blackberry. Effectively the blackbery would only need to send/recive/procees HTTP calls and JSON so I would imagine this would be possible?
Also I may have to use the enterprise blackberry server, how do I route requests to/from the app (and the enterprise server) to the back end existing app. Is this all seamless with some config settings on the enterprise server or does the the blackberry application need to handle this in a certain way?
You can definitely use a RESTful service and JSON on the BlackBerry. Depending on the version you are targeting you may have to download a JSON library. There is also a good reference guide at http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/javame/json-me/ you can look through.
The Enterprise server shouldn't affect your ability to use this, as you're essentially making the same calls a browser would, and it will know how to route that traffic.