2.1.4 Measurement of IE scenarios

PFM - Agent for Service Response collects the time to complete displaying the Web pages in the Internet Explorer, measures the approximate performance response close to the actual performance the users experience in the Internet Explorer. You can define a series of tasks consisting of multiple sets of operations in Internet Explorer as an IE scenario and measure it. PFM - Agent for Service Response can measure IE scenarios response times down to thousandths of a second (3 decimal places).

The following figure provides an overview of measurement of an IE scenario.

Figure 2‒7: Overview of measurement of an IE scenario

At startup, PFM - Agent for Service Response's IE Probe Daemon reads the three files listed below. Measurement results for each measurement condition are output to a report file and then collected by Agent Collector at a specified interval.

Probe action condition definition file (esp.conf)

This file defines startup options, such as the maximum number of measurement conditions for a PFM - Agent for Service Response IE probe and the maximum size of a report file. For details, see 8.2 Probe action condition definition file (esp.conf).
Measurement condition registration file (esptask.xml)

This file defines the measurement conditions, such as a target's service type, host name, and measurement interval. You define the measurement conditions in PFM - Web Console (or you can define conditions by editing the measurement condition registration file directly). For details about defining conditions in PFM - Web Console, see 4.7 Defining measurement conditions in PFM - Web Console. For details about measurement condition registration file, see 8.3 Measurement condition registration file (esptask.xml).
IE scenario file

This file is used to record the operations in the Internet Explorer services as an IE scenario. You can use IE Recorder to create IE scenario files. An Internet Explorer window is called from IE Recorder, which defines the IE scenario by recording the operations performed in that window.

PFM - Agent for Service Response enables you to replay the Internet Explorer operations according to the IE scenario definitions and measure the required time to replay.

The measurement result of the whole IE scenario is output as the measurement result. You can define a series of operations as a scope and the measurement result includes the measurement result of each scope. For details about performance data as measurement results, see IE Scenario (PI_IES) and IE Scenario Overview (PI_IESO) in 10. Records.

Organization of this subsection

(1) Measurement of performance response for operations in Internet Explorer
(2) Response determination
(3) Identification of tags

(1) Measurement of performance response for operations in Internet Explorer

You can measure the response performance for operations in Internet Explorer. To do this, you define a series (or range) of operations in Internet Explorer. You can define a maximum of 16 scopes. One range of operations in Internet Explorer defined as a scope may overlap another range. The following figure shows an example of scope definitions.

Figure 2‒8: Example of scope definitions

In this example, each scope is measured in terms of different measurement items described below:

Entire IE scenario

The time for replaying the IE scenario required to get to the point of being able to log in, the time that elapsed from display of the login window to select the operation window 1, and the time that elapsed from display of the login window to select the operation window 2.
Scope 1

The time for replaying the IE scenario required to get to the point of being able to log in, the time that elapsed from display of the login window to display of the main window.
Scope 2

The time for replaying the IE scenario required to get to the point of being able to log in, the time that elapsed from display of the login window to select the operation window 1.
Scope 3

The time for replaying the IE scenario required to select the operation window 1 in the main window that elapsed from display of the operation window 1.
Scope 4

The time for replaying the IE scenario required to select the operation window 2 in the operation window 1 that elapsed from display of the operation window 2.

As demonstrated in this example, you can measure the performance of each type of processing by defining scopes within a single IE scenario.

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(2) Response determination

By defining response determination information, you can check the details of the HTML responses acquired from a defined IE scenario and detect abnormalities at the measurement target.

If you want to treat measurement tests as failure when the login failure page appears, define the response determination information and then check the details of the response. When PFM - Agent for Service Response checks the response, it only checks the strings of the obtained HTML file. The following figure shows an example of response determination definitions when login is successful and when login fails.

Figure 2‒9: Example of response determination definitions (measurement of an IE scenario)

In this example, if the page after transition contains the word Invalid, login is determined to have failed. If this error is detected, measurement of the IE scenario is canceled.

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(3) Identification of tags

After you record the IE scenario, the attributes or the positions of the operation target tags in the HTML file may change due to the layout change of the monitoring target site. In such a case, you can set a filtering condition to specify the monitoring target tag without re-recording the IE scenario.

The following describes how to identify the tags for operating targets.

Inner text:

Identifies the tags for operating targets by the inner text, which is surrounded by the start and end tags. If you specify the inner text, the tag that has the specified inner text is selected and operated during replaying the IE scenario. If there are multiple tags with the specified inner text, the tag that appears first in the HTML file is selected.

Attributes:

Identifies the tags for operating targets by the attribute value of the tag.

If you specify the attribute, the tag with the specified attribute value is selected and operated during replaying the IE scenario. If there are multiple tags with the specified attribute value, the tag that appears first in the HTML file is selected.

Tag position:

Identifies the tags for operating targets by the position of tag in the HTML file that has same inner text or attribute value. If you specify the tag position, the tag in the specified position is selected and operated during replaying the IE scenario.

For details about how to identify the tags for operating targets, see 7.3.2 Operation Settings window.

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