MS Web Application Stress Tool

There is an off-by-one error in perfmon counter recording, whereby the tool will think it has made one measurement more than it actually has. When computing the average, this causes the average value to be slightly less than it should be. The 50th-percentile value will not have this error. The longer the test duration, the less impact this will have on results. However, if strict numeric accuracy is required, open the hcounters.csv file after running a test and manually analyze the data.

The tool makes an initial perfmon data query when the warm-up period starts; this set of values may skew results, since the system is not yet initialized. The longer the test duration, the less impact this will have on results. However, if strict numeric accuracy is required, open the hcounters.csv file after running a test, remove the first data line, and then manually analyze the data.

POST data containing line breaks will not be properly encoded and sent as a POST request. As a workaround, remove any line breaks manually. Note that some scripts created using browser recording will have line breaks at the very end of the POST data.

The user interface cannot import POST data from a file if the file exceeds 128kb in size.

The user interface only supports custom port numbers through 32000, instead of the 65000 TCP upper limit.

If the tool is started by a user, instead of an administrator, an error message appears prompting the user to re-install the program. The error should suggest logging in as an administrator instead.

Viewing a report for a script that has been deleted with cause the product to crash. Because deleting a script will also delete all reports, this error condition only manifests when a user is viewing a report at the same time that the script is deleted.

Page group names cannot contain a single quote.

Redirects to SSL pages fail when the URL is given absolutely, like "https://foo.com/". Redirects work for relative SSL addresses, like "/" or "/default.asp".

Servers which respond with invalid HTTP, such as using \n linebreaks instead of \r\n, may not have their responses understood by the tool. This will prevent logging and browser recording. This problem has been observed with the Cold Fusion server software; we are currently working with Allaire to investigate the problem.

Perfmon counters may be unavailable from Win2000 servers for a short time after a server is rebooted, if the Webtool service has previously connected to the server for perfmon logging. This issue is under investigation. A workaround is to restart the Webtool service after a web server is rebooted.

fixed a safe-array issue that caused an errors when using the object model to update the querystring values with SetValueList().

fixed a header bug where the content-length was not being removed from a redirected POST.

fixed a header bug caused by incorrect content-length and content-type fields.

Updated object model help file.

Improved setup program to remove the need for a reboot when WASmsg.dll is updated.

Fixed bug where data would be lost when running a multi-threaded test with %USERNAME% substitution in the URL, while UseCGIFields was disabled.

The UseCGIFormatting property is now properly transferred when a script is copied.

The UseCGIFormatting property is now off when browser recording to create a script. This forces the Content-Type and Content-Length headers to be static instead of automatic, and thereby fixes various problems with replaying recorded scripts that contain Post data.

The tool no longer deadlocks during the "Stopping Test Clients" phase when the script includes a Post verb to a specific file, and all name-value pairs for that file have a "Don't Use" distribution selected, and the test is run with multiple threads.

Updated object model help file to clarify usage of certain methods.

Fixed a bug where hitting the Delete key while renaming a report, machine group, or user population would delete the entire object, not just a character in the name.

Added confirmation dialog to Delete action for reports, machine groups, and user populations.

Fixed a bug in assync socket logic. Problem caused the tool to hang while receiving content from server. These problems would be logged as timeout errors, and the client machine would appear to be idle while waiting to receive content. The problem was time sensitive, so it occurred more frequently on fast 100MB+ networks with fast content, using multi-processor client machines.

Fixed round-robin DNS support.

Fixed setup bug whereby the msjet files were not being updated on Win2000 computers which already had older versions of the files.

Setup fix. Now does more aggressive checks to make sure system file dao350.dll is present and registered on Windows 2000 machines.

Browser recording fix. Now supports web applications which respond with the HTTP/0.9 protocol (i.e., without header data)

New, improved icon

Updated help file

Now auto-register system file msjetoledb40.dll. Also added more setup checks for this file. This fixes an install program where sometimes the tool would not start with the error "Class not registered"

Updated system file msjet35.dll from version 3.51.0623 to 3.51.2723

Miscellaneous small fixes

Fixed log import code for "Microsoft IIS Log File" format to support IIS 3.0 and new IIS 5.0 formats

Improved browser record functionality in NT4/SP5/MSIE5 environment

Fixed the Help - About dialog box

Fixed access violation in h.exe command-line utility.

Consistent styles were added and broken links were fixed in the sample web files included in the install.

The script1 and script2 object model sample scripts on this website were fixed. Both now support NT4 and Windows 2000 hosts.

HTTP Keep-Alives are now maintained after receiving chunked responses

Fixed fatal error during import of a WCAT script.

The random delay time is no longer included in the time to first byte and time to last byte values (TTFB, TTLB).

The unattended install modes were fixed.

SSL: Apply to All now works for updating the port on all script items.

added MsJet files to the install script (MsJet35.dll, MsJTer35.dll, MsJInt35.dll). These files were part of the operating system in Windows 2000 until build 2072, but were then removed. WebTool has dependencies on these files, and so WebTool builds prior to 242 will not work on Windows 2000 build 2072 and later. NT 4.0 users are not affected by this problem.

the WASmsg.dll file version was updated in build 242. This may require some systems to reboot after the install.

Renamed product to "Microsoft Web Application Stress Tool". The DOM names have all changed from "Homer" to "WAS"; for example, object "homer.EngControl.1" is now "WAS.EngControl.1".