Load Testing Web 2.0 Applications (Browser-Driven)

In addition to facilitating testing of today's modern Web applications on the protocol level (HTTP), Silk Performer enables you to use real Web browsers (Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox) to generate load.

Browser-driven load testing is available in two flavors:

Re-using a functional test created with Silk Test. This approach applies best if you already have Silk Test keyword test assets that automate functional tests with one of the supported browsers. When importing such assets, Silk Performer wraps them into a BDL stub script to make it executable as part of a load test. For more information, see Single Session GUI-Level Testing in GUI-Level Testing Support.
Creating browser-driven load testing scripts from scratch within Silk Performer. With this approach, the BDL scripting language is used to model the user actions. With this option, no Silk Test installation is required. The user actions are recorded within a purpose-built tool named Browser Application. This application hosts an Internet Explorer component and facilitates recording, including adding verifications, defining Time-to-interact elements and visual debugging.
Note: Recording within Chrome or Firefox is currently not supported. But once recorded within the Browser Application, you can replay your script in Chrome or Firefox.

Note: In terms of licensing, there are no differences. For both types of browser-driven load testing, the license type SilkPerformerWebVU is required.