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Problem with Load Testing of password protected pages

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Glendon
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Glendon asked on 17 Sep 2012, 05:30 PM
Hello,

I am evaluating the Telerik Test Studio, and have found most of it to be easy to use with the exception of the load tests.
The problem I am having is with testing pages that are protected by a standard asp.net forms authentication system.
I have tried recording the load test steps using a fresh login (no pre-existing login cookie), Have tried recording with a remembered login cookie from a previous browser session. And have tried recording a load test by having the login form create a new persistent login cookie.

The result of all methods seem to be troublesome. Eventually all of the methods I have tried end up with the load testing of application pages resulting in a 302 response redirecting them to the login page.

It would seem that there are issues with the logon cookies during a load test.

So, my question is how can I reliably load test application pages which are protected by an asp.net forms authentication page?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.

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Cody
Telerik team
answered on 19 Sep 2012, 03:57 PM
Hello Glendon,

I believe there are different mehtods of protecting asp.net forms authentication pages. If it's using Windows Authentication, Test Studio currently is not compatible with this specific authentication method. It should work just fine with application based login forms which use cookies or query strings for user/session identification.

We are adding Windows Authentication compatibility in our R2 release. This is due out by the end of this week. My suggestion is to wait just a day or two, get R2 when it's publicly available and try once more. There are a LOT of bug fixes and a LOT of new features contained in this release.

All the best,
Cody
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Cody
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answered on 26 Sep 2012, 04:02 PM
Hello Glendon,

I want to catch up with you and inform you that our R2 release went public on Thursday of last week. I encourage you to upgrade to this version and try again. To get this just download the current trial from our main page. The link has been replace with the 2012 R2 trial version of Test Studio.

All the best,
Cody
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Alex Rak
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answered on 10 Oct 2012, 07:48 PM
Hi, Cody,

I'm using the latest version of Test Studio (2012.2.920.0) and the problem is still there.

To debug the issue I actually set up Fiddler as a reverse proxy and now I'm looking at HTTP traffic generated by the load agents. Guess what... the cookies are ignored by the load agents. I mean, they re-use the recorded cookies, but not the ones that get issued in real time during the test. Effectively, you can't test an Asp.Net site as it will always give you a new cookie at first request in order to track your session. Unless you use that cookie, which load agents do not, your test is doomed.

There goes a bug report.

Regards.
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Glendon
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answered on 10 Oct 2012, 09:07 PM
I can confirm Alex's statement. It simply ignores the new cookies issued by the server. It just keeps trying to use the cookie value from the recording. So, if I make a recording using a pre-existing cookie, and then run the load test before that cookie expires, I can briefly run the load tests. Of course the next day, the load test fails as the old cookie value is rejected by the server.

This is very simple to test, you simply need to make a plain .Net website using the project template in Visual Studio. The load tests will fail even against that simple site if the recording for the test includes login and logout steps.

Needless to say, if you are using session cookies, entire load tests can be invalidated as multiple "virtual users" are all hitting the same server with the same session cookie and end up corrupting each other's state.
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Cody
Telerik team
answered on 10 Oct 2012, 10:16 PM
Hi Alex and Glendon,

Unless you selected the cookie to be a dynamic target, then this would be the expected behavior. Our Load Test will only echo back exactly what was recorded except for the dynamic targets you select to act as variable substitutions.

Greetings,
Cody
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Glendon
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answered on 10 Oct 2012, 11:39 PM
Well, that is pretty much what I expected, a cookie should be a "dynamic target", but unfortunately the cookies do not show in the dynamic target selection window.

All it is showing is a bunch of hidden form variables and input controls.
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Cody
Telerik team
answered on 11 Oct 2012, 01:57 PM
Hello Glendon,

What you describe sounds like a Test Studio bug. Could you either:

a) Point me to a public URL where I can reproduce this behavior (I may need logon credentials to reproduce the cookie problem)
b) Send me the Fiddler trace demonstrating this cookie setting problem? If you want to send the Fiddler trace confidentially, you can either open a new support ticket (which are always private) and attached it or email it to support@telerik.com and reference ticket 607945 so that email gets redirected to me.

Greetings,
Cody
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Alex Rak
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answered on 11 Oct 2012, 03:19 PM
Hi Cody,

I've actually raised a bug about this issue (Ticket # 616417). In that ticket I have my test video attached, which (among other things) demonstrates dynamic targets and Fiddler trace. Glendon is right, you cannot choose cookies in dynamic targets and thus disable their recording.

Regards.
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Cody
Telerik team
answered on 11 Oct 2012, 04:30 PM
Hello,

Thank you for that information. I just found out (by talking to our developer) I was incorrect in my understanding how we handle cookies in our load tests and for that I apologize for giving out incorrect information. Our load test does not show cookies as a dynamic target. However it is supposed to handle them correctly at run time i.e. whatever is set by the web server is supposed to be recognized and returned back.

I also found out we did find and fix a couple of cookie handling bugs recently. If you haven't already done so, please upgrade to 2012.2.920 which is our official 2012 R2 version released on Sept. 20th.

I'll go and look at your support ticket now.

Greetings,
Cody
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Maria
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answered on 30 Oct 2012, 07:56 PM
I am running Test Studio release 920. I am having the same issues as the gentlemen above with the load tests not using the cookies generated by the web server. My tests are failing. Any idea when the real fix will be released?
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Cody
Telerik team
answered on 31 Oct 2012, 04:48 PM
Hi Maria,

I am sorry you have run into this problem. This is a known issue we recently discovered and are actively investigating what is causing it. I will update you when our software developer assigned to this bug has more details what is going on.

Greetings,
Cody
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Thomas Mittag
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answered on 07 Dec 2012, 02:44 PM
Am I the only one who thinks that this will make the load testing tool unusable for ASP.NET applications? Since it is not adjusting the ASP.NET session cookie none of the session information of the currently logged on user is maintained! And additionally, when using Forms authentication with cookie, the login information is lost as well.

I would consider this a critical bug of the software, is there any way to add dynamic targets manually?

Thanks
Thomas Mittag
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Cody
Telerik team
answered on 07 Dec 2012, 03:13 PM
Hi Thomas,

You definitely are not the only person that feels that way. Also we do consider this to be a VERY critical bug. We had a software developer working on this problem full time for the past 3 days and I have some very good news I can now pass along to everyone.

In our investigation we uncovered 2 bugs causing cookie tracking problems during the execution of a load test. We are testing the fixes for this now. We will have a new build that we'll make available in a day or two, as soon as we finish our QA verification.

Regards,
Cody
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Maria
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answered on 07 Dec 2012, 03:37 PM
That is good news. We stopped using the load testing tool as this bug makes the tool useless for us. We've looked into other load testing tools that work, but so far the ones we like are much more expensive. Please keep us informed on when the new release is available so we can avoid switching to another tool.

Thanks for the update.
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Cody
Telerik team
answered on 10 Dec 2012, 09:41 PM
Hi,

We need a couple more days. Our QA testers uncovered a problem with the proposed fix. We're working on this new problem now.

Regards,
Cody
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Cody
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answered on 12 Dec 2012, 05:37 PM
Hello to all,

The new trial build containing our Load Test Cookie fix can be downloaded from here:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/12886581/Telerik.TestStudio.2012.2.1207_Trial.msi

For anyone that already has a license and needs the purchased installer, contact me through support@telerik.com, reference ticket 607945 and it will get to me. I will then privately send you the link to that installer.

Kind regards,
Cody
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Glendon
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answered on 12 Dec 2012, 05:41 PM
Thank you, I will give it a try today and let you know the results.
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Glendon
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answered on 12 Dec 2012, 11:09 PM
It appears to be working better now. Most pages are now getting 200 responses instead of 401 or redirects to the login page. I do however notice that all the replayed ajax/js calls to asmx web services are getting a 401 Unauthorized response. I do not know if that is a problem in my setup, or still a lingering bug in the Test Studio. I will investigate further, but at least it looks to be functioning much better now.
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Cody
Telerik team
answered on 13 Dec 2012, 05:04 PM
Hi Glendon,

I am glad to hear we are making progress. If, as part of your investigation, you think this is a Test Studio bug, I'll be glad to look at this with you via GoToMeeting. I'll stand by for an update from you.

Kind regards,
Cody
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Troels
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answered on 02 Jan 2013, 07:36 PM
Hi Cody. I am also currently evaluating test studio, and i think this bug is still present in the latest official trial build (ends with 1204), and your download link for the 1207 build gives a 404 :-( Is it still possible to get a hold of a build with the cookie fix in it? Thanks, -Troels
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Cody
Telerik team
answered on 02 Jan 2013, 07:57 PM
Hi Troels,

I removed the link to our 1207 build because we found and fixed an additional bug where a load test would cause faulted virtual users if the web server was configured to send compressed responses. The build containing both fixes can be downloaded from here:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/12886581/Telerik.TestStudio.2012.2.1219_Trial.msi

Regards,
Cody
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Donnie
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answered on 14 May 2013, 05:06 PM
Hi Cody,

I am also having an issue with cookies and load testing.  It appears that all of my users are using the same cookie values, instead of getting a new set of cookie values and since there are AJAX calls once the user is logged in and the AJAX calls are setting new cookie values, the load tests are throwing server errors.  I am using the latest version of Test Studio, 2012.2.1420.  Am I missing a setting? 

Donnie
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Cody
Telerik team
answered on 14 May 2013, 05:21 PM
Hi Donnie,

We have included a number of Load Test related bug fixes, including stale cookies, in our latest internal build, 2012.2.1527. I recommend you download it from your Telerik.com account by navigating to "Latest Internal Builds" after logging on to our website.

Greetings,
Cody
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Glendon
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Cody
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Alex Rak
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Glendon
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Maria
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Thomas Mittag
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Troels
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Donnie
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