LoadRunner 8.

0 Specialist Exam
Review Guide

This is an early access version of a new LoadRunner Specialist

exam review material. We welcome your comments.

LoadRunner 8.0 Specialist Exam Review Guide 1

 Copyright 1994 - 2004 by Mercury Interactive Corporation

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LR80SP-ExamPrep-02EA

2 LoadRunner 8.0 Specialist Exam Review Guide

About the Review Guide

Requirements

LoadRunner 8.0 installation

Internet access to http://newtours.mercuryinteractive.com

General Test Instructions

Questions in the specialist exam may be asked in any of the following formats:

Multiple choice questions: Clearly mark the circle beside the letter(s) in the
answer sheet. Multiple choice questions having more than one correct answer are
indicated so.

Fill in the blanks: Write your answer(s) in the blanks provided clearly and legibly.

True or False: Circle the word True or False in the answer sheet.

Describe/Explain/Essay-type: Answer in one to three sentences.

Answers to questions are included in the back of the book. This guide is intended
to help you prepare for the level and type of questions that will be asked during
the exam.

LoadRunner 8.0 Specialist Exam Review Guide 3

4 LoadRunner 8.0 Specialist Exam Review Guide

Review Items

Performance Test Planning

1. Which of the following information are considered relevant when gathering system
usage for a performance test? There are two answers.
a.
b.
c.
d.

System architecture
Business processes
Application modules about to be unit-tested
Financial data such as general ledger and P&L statements

2. There are three main criteria to determine which business processes to select for performance testing. What are these criteria?

3. Each business process takes a certain amount of time to complete. Under ideal conditions, you determine this amount of time as ________________________

LoadRunner 8.0 Specialist Exam Review Guide 5

4. You want to determine how many users are active on a Web site during a twenty-four
hour period. What type of diagram can you use to map the business processes and the
volume of each across a fixed time line?

5. How many transactions will need to run per minute if a load test has to run for two
hours with 5000 users, assuming an average transaction length of five minutes?

6. This value represents the number of users performing business processes on the application during the busiest time frame of an atypical day (e.g. holiday). What do you call
this value?

7. Write a quantifiable performance test objective given the following information:

Maximum number of concurrent users at peak time: 6000
Business Process: Update Totals
Preferred response time range: 5 to 7 seconds

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Core LoadRunner and Virtual User Generator (VuGen)

1. What is a Load Test?

2. What is an Integration Test?

3. What are the LoadRunner Components and what role does each play in creating a
performance test?

LoadRunner 8.0 Specialist Exam Review Guide 7

4. General Vuser Functions:

Transactions are defined and measured in a Vuser script using which two functions?

5. What is ThinkTime?

6. Create a Vuser script where the value of lr_think_time is parameterized. The value of
thinktime should be displayed as an output message in the execution log.

8 LoadRunner 8.0 Specialist Exam Review Guide

7. What is correlation?

Correlation Activity:
This exercise requires internet access.
Application: Mercury Tours
URL: http://newtours.mercuryinteractive.com

Vuser Recording Settings:

Recording should be HTML-based

Correlation during recording should be turned off

Advanced recording should be turned off

General Vuser Settings:

Save correlation information during replay

Show only differences that appear in action

Download images on Snapshots viewer

HTML comparison: for scanning differences

Record the application startup

LoadRunner 8.0 Specialist Exam Review Guide 9

Record User Actions:

1. Sign in to the Mercury Tours Web site as jojo with the password bean.
2. Enter the flight information to the FLIGHT FINDER page.
Accept the defaults for all input fields except the following listed below (round-trip
flight, 1 passenger, economy class, etc)
Departing From: San Francisco
Arriving In: New York
3. Click the CONTINUE button.
4. Accept the first departing flight in the list.
By default, the first available flight is selected for each direction when the SELECT
FLIGHT page appears.
5. Select the last (4th) return flight in the list.
6. Click the CONTINUE button on the SELECT FLIGHT page.
7. Purchase the selected flight.
Enter the passenger and credit card information in the BOOK A FLIGHT page. Use the
data supplied below:
First Name: Joseph
Last Name: Smith
Number: 783921045786
8. Click the SECURE PURCHASE button on the BOOK A FLIGHT page.
9. Verify that the Flight Confirmation page appeared.
10. In the browser, click Sign-Off and wait for the Sign-On page to appear. Stop recording.

10 LoadRunner 8.0 Specialist Exam Review Guide

Vuser Requirements:

Save the Vuser script twice.

In one of the scripts, parameterize the fields fromPort and toPort as type, file,
sequential using the following data:

Depart

Arrive

San Francisco
Seattle
Sydney
Zurich

New York
Frankfurt
London
Acapulco

The script should play back correctly.

Questions:

What were the errors found in the Vuser script?

How did you correct the errors?

LoadRunner 8.0 Specialist Exam Review Guide 11

Answers to Questions

Performance Test Planning

1. A B
2. Mission-critical, heavy throughput, dynamic content
3. Preferred response time
4. Task Distribution Diagram
5. 1000 transactions per minute
6. Peak load
7. The Update Totals transaction time should be seven seconds or less during peak hours
for 6000 concurrent users.

Core Technology and Navigation

1. A load test is a short-term test of system performance under typical real-world conditions using critical business processes.

12 LoadRunner 8.0 Specialist Exam Review Guide

2.
3. Controller - the administrative center for creating, maintaining, executing and monitoring scenarios. Scenarios have a .lrs extension
LoadRunner Generators - Machines that emulate user volume and locally stores load
test results until the scenario completes running, then the results are transferred to
the results file specified.
LoadRunner Analysis - Processes the results from the scenario run. Results files have
a .lrr extension. After the results are processed by the LR Analysis tool, the results
files have a .lra extension.
Virtual User Generator - records Vuser scripts that emulate the steps of real users
using the application under test
4. lr_start_transaction
lr_end transaction
5. ThinkTime is a measure of time that a real user takes to pause between the execution
of steps.
6. A sample snippet of code that parameterizes the value of thinktime and outputs the
value to the execution log:
//Save the string value of the parameter to an INT variable
int yzf = atoi(lr_eval_string({param1});
lr_think_time(yzf);
lr_output_message (The parameter value is %s, lr_eval_string({param1}));
7. Correlation is the method of capturing values in a script as a result of dynamic data
passed from server to the client and back. The values are saved in a LoadRunner
parameter and is reused instead of the original re corded value.

LoadRunner 8.0 Specialist Exam Review Guide 13

8. Correlation Activity:
First error is in the basic script. On the list of available flights, even if the first listed
flight is selected by default in the Departing From table, you still need to record
clickin on it for the value to be captured and correlated when the cities are parameterized.
When the departing and arrival cities were parameterized, errors occured during the
run because the flight information changes depending on the selected departing and
arrival cities. An auto-scan corrected the errors by placing the appropriate
web_reg_save_param statements in two correlations found, Blue Skies and United
flight details.

14 LoadRunner 8.0 Specialist Exam Review Guide