Last November I blogged about WAST and how this tool can be used for Web Application Stress Testing. In that I made a statement saying that it would be great if we can use this tool for our own products such as ESB and WSAS. During the two week vacation I got due to my illness, I thought I should do some research to see if we can actually use this tool for ESB.
So I first started the ESB server along with the axis2Server and then started recording. Once the recording started a Firefox browser window opened asking to enter the web address. Therefore I entered the proper URL and started doing some operations in the Administration Console. (E.g.:- Logged in, Click on Proxy Services link, etc). Then I stopped the recording to see if it has been properly done and to my surprise nothing was recorded. I was quite confused. I was pretty sure that I did everything properly but then again I have not read the manual properly. It clearly states that this can be used with Internet Explorer only. So this was the first reason for me to give up on this. Then I tried to record on IE but again failed since WAST does not support HTTPS. If you want to test a secured site like ESB you will manually have to go and change the URL, which was quite annoying.
So due to these drawbacks I think that we should focus more on some other tools which we can easily use for stress testing without having to put so much effort like we have to when using WAST. On the other hand if we spend a little bit of time on this particular tool we might be able to get some use for our products. I'm sure we can but it requires a little bit of effort. So while checking for other alternatives it is advisable that we do more research on WAST as well.
Refer http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/itsolutions/intranet/downloads/webstres.mspx?mfr=true for it's limitations.
