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Using Page Groups

The last two script items in the Sample Script contain the text "adGrp" under the Group column. This is a page group, which is shown as "Default" unless you change it. You can use page groups to change the order in which the script items are invoked. You can also use page groups to change the number of times that each script item is invoked while a script is running.

You can see a list of all the page groups by selecting the Page Groups node in the script tree view. You can also change the distribution percentages from this view. Notice that Keep-Alives are enabled for entire page groups at a time.

You can add, change, or delete page groups by selecting an item in the Group column from within the script items window. Page groups provide the following benefits:

• A logical grouping of paths in a Web Application Stress Tool script. For example, a Web page might contain several elements that the browser requests individually, such as graphics. If you record a script, you will see that all of the elements of a particular page are requested sequentially. Since these elements are requested by the browser, including them in a script is a good idea, as opposed to simply requesting the page where the graphics reside. Use a page group to collect all of these components into one transaction. They make your script more readable because groups of files are associated with each other by a page group name. Once you add a page group to one script item, that name becomes available in the page group drop-down and can quickly be selected and assigned to multiple pages in a script.
• More accurate reporting statistics because all of the pages in a group are summarized in the Web Application Stress Tool report, in a section called Group Data. You can quickly see the distribution, number of hits, and result codes associated with a particular page group.
• More accurate stress script because elements of a group are requested sequentially, regardless of their location in the script items window, much like the way a browser would request them. Additionally, you can assign a configurable percentage to a specific page group. For example, if you know the home page will be requested 80 times more than the other pages on your site, you can assign all of the elements of the home page into a page group; then you can assign a value of 80 to the page group in the Distribution column of the Page Groups section (in the script properties). You can then evenly distribute the remaining pages.