Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Load Testing Tool Released

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Rob Jarratt, one of our Visual Studio Team System Core Rangers, has developed a new beta that was put out this morning, with some top requested features for performing load testing.  Judging from the thousands of downloads of his last release, this release, which features ASMX support, will sure to be a hit.  This release is out on the Codeplex WCF Load Test site.

 

This tool takes a WCF trace file and a WCF client proxy, or a WCF interface contract, and generates a unit test that replays the same sequence of calls found in the trace file. The code generated is easily modifiable so that data variations can be introduced for the purpose of doing performance testing.

 

The tool generates code for both Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008. It also installs a wizard into both editions of Visual Studio for creating the trace and processing it from inside Visual Studio. If both editions are present the tool is installed into both editions. The source code is a Visual Studio 2005 project.

 

The tool has the following main features:

  • Replay of captured scenario in a unit test that can be included in a load test.
  • Support for the DataContractSerializer.
  • Support for message contracts.
  • ASMX support (beta)
  • Support for proxies generated using svcutil.
  • Support for clients that create proxies at run time from contract interfaces.
  • Supports calls to multiple services in a single scenario.
  • Supports multiple calls to the same service operation.
  • Filtering by SOAP action of which messages in the trace to replay.
  • Readable and modifiable code is generated.
  • Automatic association of trace message with proxy method (requires all operations to have a unique SOAP action).
  • Support for client and server side traces.
  • A command line tool for processing traces and generating code.
  • Visual Studio 2005/2008 integration (Team Developer, Team Test, Team Suite and for 2008 also Professional)) that can be used instead of the command line tool.

 

Kudos to Rob and the VSTS Core Ranger team for putting together another outstanding tool.  This is going to assist many developers who need to test web/cloud services and ultimately will improve quality of solutions in use today.