Admittedly developers and teams can have a helluva time testing at scale. Bugs are squashed, the experience is perfect, yet you don’t want to be left releasing a slew of updates through the next month to fix potential issues. Worse, if you’re a cloud based service, you want to make sure you won’t get absolutely crushed by a positive influx of consumer interest. So what do you do? Test at scale before releasing the next greatest alternative to Dropbox, that’s what.
Mu Dynamics has introduced a new tool called Mu Studio Scale, which lets mobile developers (such as iPhone developers) implementing cloud like functions test at scale by impersonating actual users. Ars Technica explains,
The only way to do prelaunch load testing on a cloud app under such circumstances is to impersonate hundreds of thousands or even millions of users simultaneously using the application—walking through the movie selection and ordering process, or logging into the app and using the new service. That’s where Mu Dynamics comes in.
Mu’s test tool starts by recording actual user interactions, so that it can then play them back with the parameters defined by the tester. As far as the tested system is concerned, the test tool looks just like an app or service. The tool can log into a pay-per-view service and order a movie, watch previews, tweet, send SMS, and generally act like an iPhone or a Droid. A set of software players then replays the transactions for the test subject at whatever scale the user needs, so as the tester adds more capacity the test system can simulate more users by running more players.
The only issue right now is that Mu Dynamics is having some trouble establishing their business model. While their products are geared for more enterprise uses, hopefully they’ll be able to deliver some opportunities for smaller developers and teams in need of something groundbreaking like this. It’s pretty great, and you’ll have to hit the source links below for more information on how all this wild voodoo actually works.
[via ArsTechnica & Mu Dynamics]
