Dependent requests caching
Hi,
I have a problem with caching the requests on the load agents. I have a load test with several web tests. Each web tests contains about 10 requests. Each of the requests has several dependent requests (when executed) like css files, images etc. The dependent requests are almost the same for all the requests - in other words, all tested pages contains same css files and images.
A browser of a real user loads those css files and images from a web server just once per visit (for every new visitor). But the load test agent loads all of those dependent request every time it encounters them without any caching - and it of course generate much higher load on web servers than real traffic. Is there a way how to make the load agent cache dependent requests during an execution of one web test? I tried to switch "Cache control" properties of the requests in webtests to "True" but it didn't make any difference.
Best regards,
Lada Sobr
[952 byte] By [
LadaSobr] at [2007-12-17]
Lada,
Web tests use an algorithm very similar to the one Internet Explorer uses to determine when to cache requests. I believe the behavior you're seeing is the fact that each iteration of the web test is being treated as a "new user" rather than a returning user. You can change this setting in your load test's scenario node(s) and changing the Percentage of New Users property to 0%, for example. This would cause every iteration of the web test to be treated as a returning user who would fetch the images the first time and only fetch them again based on the caching algorithm.
I hope this helps.
Josh
Hello Josh,
I am aware of this feature, but this is not the case. The problem lies inside each webtest. For example: My webtest contains 10 requests, each of them leads to the same set of 20 dependent requests. If I execute the load test with this web test I get 210 requests per web test. But real browser generates only 30 requests (10 for main requests and 20 for the first loading of dependent requests).
Regards,
Lada
