Mercury Interactive Makes Stress Testing a Web Site Simple and Affordable; Astra SiteTest Generates over 4 Million Hits Using a Single Windows 95 or NT Workstation.NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 9, 1996--A new software tool unveiled today by Mercury Interactive For another company with a similar name, see Mercury Computer Systems. HP Mercury (formerly Mercury Interactive) is a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard that is a market leader in automated software quality assurance and offers products in other areas such as diagnostics, Corporation (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on : MERQ MERQ Mercury Interactive Corp (stock symbol) ) will, for the first time, make Web site testing simple and affordable by enabling organizations to stress-test a Web site using a single Windows 95 or Windows NT (Windows New Technology) A 32-bit operating system from Microsoft for Intel x86 CPUs. NT is the core technology in Windows 2000 and Windows XP (see Windows). Available in separate client and server versions, it includes built-in networking and preemptive multitasking. workstation. Webmasters can generate millions of actual hits against a Web server, with point and click ease, to help ensure performance and reliability of Internet/intranet applications. Announced today at Internet World, Astra SiteTest will help Webmasters solve the problem of poor web site performance and failure. Web sites must be able to support millions of anticipated hits every day and deliver the performance required or it may discourage users from returning to a site and risk critical sales opportunities from site failure. Recent Web site horror stories such as the IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) Olympic site and the CNN CNN or Cable News Network Subsidiary company of Turner Broadcasting Systems. It was created by Ted Turner in 1980 to present 24-hour live news broadcasts, using satellites to transmit reports from news bureaus around the world. Interactive Election Day site, where service was almost completely terminated due to peak loads, are prime examples where the Web server could not support the increased user load. By emulating real-life load conditions, Astra SiteTest spots potential performance problems before they occur -- before a site is deployed and during the application development lifecycle, and while the site is in use -- to ensure that users have a positive experience when surfing a site. Astra SiteTest is the industry's first native Windows NT and Windows 95 load testing Load testing is the process of creating demand on a system or device and measuring its response. In mechanical systems it refers to the testing of a system to certify it under the appropriate regulations (LOLER in the UK - Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment product. It generates the equivalent load of an unprecedented 4.3 million HTTP HTTP in full HyperText Transfer Protocol Standard application-level protocol used for exchanging files on the World Wide Web. HTTP runs on top of the TCP/IP protocol. hits to a Web server a day on a single workstation. By contrast, previous can run up to Web load testing products have required multiple UNIX UNIX Operating system for digital computers, developed by Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories in 1969. It was initially designed for a single user (the name was a pun on the earlier operating system Multics). workstations to simulate HTTP calls to a server. "Companies in virtually every industry today have some kind of critical Web-based function, from sales, marketing and distribution to customer service operations," said Zohar Gilad, director of enterprise product marketing at Mercury Interactive. "When a user experiences lengthy delays or site failures, the advantages of a Web site are negated. With Astra SiteTest corporations can deliver higher-performance, more reliable Web sites, ensuring that they serve as the competitive tool that they were intended to be." Astra SiteTest makes load testing easy by providing point-and-click Web site stress testing Determining the durability of a system by pushing it to its limits. Stress testing a network is performed by transmitting excessive numbers of packets or attempting to break in illegally. . Tailored to Webmasters, Astra SiteTest allows users to automatically generate test scripts by accessing the Web application to be tested using either Netscape Navigator An earlier Web browser for Windows, Macintosh and X Windows from Netscape that provided secure transmission over the Internet. Soon after its introduction in 1994, Navigator, or just "Netscape," as it was commonly called, quickly became the leading browser on the Web. or Microsoft Explorer. Astra SiteTest also automatically handles all Web features that often affect Web server accuracy and performance, including support for "cookies," proxy servers, user authentication See authentication. , session IDs, CGI scripts, API calls, HTML HTML in full HyperText Markup Language Markup language derived from SGML that is used to prepare hypertext documents. Relatively easy for nonprogrammers to master, HTML is the language used for documents on the World Wide Web. forms and more. For example, Astra SiteTest records cookies -- information packets exchanges between the browser and server -- to ensure accuracy and then plays then back. As a result, Webmasters can make sure that the use of cookies does not cause performance degradation. Likewise, Astra SiteTest also tests CGI scripts and API calls which often connect to database servers in order to ensure that performance is not affected. In addition, Astra SiteTest offers Web data analysis tools to assess an application or a Web site's performance through clear, color-coded graphs and reports including throughput, number of connections per second, maximum response time and others. The graphs and reports can be easily exported to word processing word processing, use of a computer program or a dedicated hardware and software package to write, edit, format, and print a document. Text is most commonly entered using a keyboard similar to a typewriter's, although handwritten input (see pen-based computer) and or spreadsheet programs including Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3. Provides SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) The leading security protocol on the Internet. Developed by Netscape, SSL is widely used to do two things: to validate the identity of a Web site and to create an encrypted connection for sending credit card and other personal data. Support for Testing Mission-Critical Applications Until now, testing mission-critical applications, such as on-line banking and electronic commerce applications has been a manual process. Mercury Interactive automates this process by offering HTTP support, as well as, an optional SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Plug-in Pack to simplify and automate testing of secured Web sites that utilize the HTTPS (1) (HyperText Transport Protocol Secure) The protocol for accessing a secure Web server. Using HTTPS in the URL instead of HTTP directs the message to a secure port number rather than the default Web port number of 80. protocol. Using the SSL Plug-in Pack, Astra SiteTest, connects to a Web server, just like a browser or Java applet, letting Webmasters exercise an application under real-life load conditions. First Tool to Use Real-life Data to Troubleshoot Production Problems Astra SiteTest can be used as a stand-alone product or as a plug-in to Astra -- now renamed Astra SiteManager -- a visual Web management tool. When used together, Webmasters can stress test a Web site using real-life traffic data generated from Astra SiteManager. The utilization of real-life data, which reflects users' actual traffic patterns on a site, rather than mock test data, allows users to generate more accurate tests for higher performance, more reliable Web sites. Latest in Mercury Interactive's Line of Web Testing Tools Mercury Interactive was the first to introduce technology for testing Web-based systems, with the introduction of WebTest. The technology is the foundation for its Web testing extensions to the company's client/server products, WinRunner, XRunner and LoadRunner. In October, the company introduced Astra, renamed Astra SiteManager, a visual Web management tool geared to help Webmasters and Web business managers improve the quality of corporate Web sites. Astra SiteManager adds additional functionality for load testing a Web site for improved performance and reliability of the site. Pricing and Availability Astra SiteTest is scheduled to ship in February 1997 and will be available for Windows 95 and Windows NT workstations. The product will be priced at $9,500. The SSL Plug-in Pack extension for testing secured Web sites will be priced at $995. Free evaluation copies are available and can be requested by calling 888/WEB-TEST. About Mercury Interactive Corporation Mercury Interactive develops, markets and supports a complete family of client/server software solutions that automate and manage testing and quality assurance for developers of enterprise software and systems. The company's core products -- WinRunner, XRunner and LoadRunner -- enable corporate developers, system integrators, and independent software vendors to identify software errors more quickly and efficiently than traditional methods allow. Mercury Interactive has its headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., and maintains offices across the United States and internationally with a network of distributors throughout the world. The company's common stock is traded over the counter on the NASDAQ National Market under the symbol MERQ. Mercury Interactive's Web site is located at http://www.merc-int.com CONTACT: Mercury Interactive Sue Ann Murray, 408/523-4290 sueann@merc-int.com or Evans Communications Joanna Kulesa, 408/423-2300 Joanna233@aol.com |
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