I often get asked questions like "What does PushToTest do?" PushToTest is a test automation solutions business. We surface scalability and performance problems in Web-based information systems. Our PushToTest solution drives a Web system like a real user and correlates the activity to identify broken functions and hot spots of performance issues. The same system then operates tests periodically through the day to monitor an enterprise's services and provide proof-of-service reports. See our "white paper", http://downloads.pushtotest.com/PushToTest_WhitePaper.pdf for a more complete answer. I often get asked a follow-up question that is usually asked like this: "I was wondering if you could provide me a sample of the outputs the system generates (or can generate)." The PushToTest software produces a summary report that shows the Scalability Index to the application, the resource utilization as the test operated, and the performance as load increased. This summary report is an HTML document and is easily shared among your team members. "Click here", http://downloads.pushtotest.com/tm5/ExampleSummaryReport/index.html for an example summary report. I often also get asked about the PushToTest methodology and techniques to find and solve performance issues. The question is often asked like this: "Once you run a test and the results are not acceptable then how do I leverage the PushToTest tools to find the code that is running slow?" PushToTest version 5.1 keeps track of the steps for each transaction. For instance, the following snippet of a TestScenario implements a test use case where four steps are required for each transaction.

<test>
   <run name="Open Account" testclass="com.pushtotest.WebAppTest"
method="testOpenAccount" langtype="java" />

   <run name="Transfer Funds" testclass="com.pushtotest.WebAppTest"
method="testTransfer" langtype="java" />

   <run name="Check Transfer" testclass="com.pushtotest.WebAppTest"
method="testValidateTransfer" langtype="java" />

   <run name="Close Account" testclass="com.pushtotest.WebAppTest"
method="testCloseAccount" langtype="java" />

</test>

In the above test PushToTest operates four steps: Open Account, Transfer Funds, Check Transfer, and Close Account. PushToTest keeps track of the total transaction time and the time for each step. The time of each transaction and step is stored in the transaction log file. When a particular step takes longer than expected you can break open the transaction logs for the application server and learn what was going on at that point in time. We have been hard at work over the past two months building an Enhanced Results Analysis engine. The new feature will appear in PushToTest version 5.2. It is already working and we are happy to provide it to anyone that "asks", http://www.pushtotest.com/ask_a_question. The new engine makes it much easier to visualize broken functions and hot spots to performance. Consider the Step Report that visually charts the average duration of each step across 10 equal periods of time of a test. The reporting is great but that still leaves the correlation effort up to a software engineer. And, it is a manual process to go from PushToTest logs to the application server logs. Our planned solution is to incorporate "Glassbox", http://www.glassbox.com into PushToTest version 5.2. Glassbox watches a Java application server for performance hotspots as a test operates and identifies the objects and database connection level issues causing the hotspots of performance. "Click here", http://bugs.pushtotest.com/ticket/61 to learn about the integration project. To learn more about Glassbox "click here", http://www.glassbox.com/glassbox/Download.do?mediaItemId=173 to read the Glassbox user guide. One final question I usually hear goes like this: "Where exactly are your developers located? In other words when you leverage out-of-country developers, where are they and if the customer wanted US based developers can you accommodate that." PushToTest outsources its customer engineering to our Costa Rica-based partner "Avantica", http://www.avantica.net. Costa Rica is a 4-5 hour flight to the United States and Canada. The country is on Central Time (GMT -6) and their English is very good. We normally need about one week to plan for our engineers to be in your office. -Frank