Today I used Microsoft Application Center Test to stress test a web application. The Microsoft Application Center Test is an obscure Microsoft tool that is only available in the Enterprise Edition of Visual Studio.NET 2003. It is designed to stress test web servers and analyze performance and scalability problems.
I used ACT to stress test the Lycoming County Database web site which provides information on the river and stream levels. We expect this web site to get a lot of traffic during a flood.
ACT has almost no ability to export its data or reports. It saves the data as XML but you don’t get anything to display that XML as charts or reports except for the software’s built-in test results. I have to print the report as a PDF just to get something I can copy and paste. When I have more time I plan to design a web application to work with the Microsoft Application Center Test XML format.
