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Service Monitor System (SMS)

Service Monitoring System (SMS) is an optional commercial tool that runs TestMaker test agent scripts periodically to monitor and proof a service for Quality of Service.

Contact PushToTest at sales@pushtotest.com or call (408) 374-7426 (USA California time) for details on licensing SMS.

The following section describes SMS in detail.

Terminology

Service Monitoring System (SMS) - an automated system that checks a service for acceptable response times over the lifetime of the service.
Functional Test - a single check of one function provided by the service for correct operation.
Test Cycle - the aggregate of a set of functional tests.
Response Time - the amount of milliseconds that elapses between the functional test making a Java method call to the client/consumer object and receiving a response back from the client object.
Exceptional condition - a state in which service returns an invalid response, notification of an exception, or a response that is not within a predefined number of milliseconds from the time of the request.

Feature Description

At set intervals SMS performs a functional test of one or more service functions. View the logged response times in an HTML format through a browser. Should any of the response times fall outside a predefined number of milliseconds then SMS will send an email notification of the exceptional condition. In the exceptional state, SMS terminates the current cycle and sleeps until it is time for the next cycle to begin.

Example Use Case

Every 10 minutes SMS will start a cycle. In a cycle, SMS will read from the properties file to find the first functional test. The properties file defines the SMS object to run the test and a number of milliseconds that the response may take before the functional test enters an exceptional state. For example, the first functional test may execute a command to update some information using the service and the request may take no longer than 22 seconds. SMS operates each functional test in a cycle. Between cycles, SMS sleeps until it is ready to start the next cycle.

Distributed SMS Hosts

You may operate SMS on distributed set of machines or you may contract with PushToTest Global Services to operate the network and equipment for you.

Logging

SMS will log the results of each request to a set of log files. The log file contains for each request the functional test name, time of request, number of milliseconds for the response to be received, and status of the request, error description (if any). SMS will create a new log file every 24 hours.

Dashboard Display

View SMS results in a live Web-based dashboard display. The Web browser-based user interface to view real-time monitoring statistics and automate the logging of results data. SMS will display the following status information in a dashboard:

Green status indicates no exceptional conditions within the past 30 minutes
Red status indicates exception conditions within the past 30 minutes

Information displayed will include Time (days:hours:minutes since last exceptional condition), Cause of last exceptional condition, Average, minimum, maximum response time for the past 100 requests and Last 10 requests made, time of day, and response time

The statistics page includes an HTML Meta Refresh Tag so that the page will automatically update every 30 seconds while the browser stays open to the statistics page.

Tabular Logged Data Display

The Dashboard Display offers a second interface to display a tabular list of the results of each functional check to a log file in HTML format. The user chooses from a click-able list of available log files. SMS displays each functional check in the chosen log file on a line of the tabular results display. The results will appear in this format: Functional test name, time of request, number of milliseconds for response to be received, exception condition status (0=False, 1=True), Error description (if any.)

Configuration

SMS uses a properties file to schedule functional tests and the maximum number of milliseconds that may pass before SMS treats the function in an exceptional state. The configuration file defines the email address to send an email message when SMS encounters exceptional states.

For More Information

Contact PushToTest at sales@pushtotest.com or call (408) 374-7426 (USA California time) for details on licensing SMS.

Where to go from here?

A tutorial and installation guide for TestMaker

A guide to the example agents that come with TestMaker

A list of frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Known problems and incomplete features in this release of TestMaker

Learn about XSTest, a framework that turns TestMaker recorded test agent scripts into load and scalability tests

Learn about Web Services and TestMaker from articles from IBM, BEA, Sun and popular magazines

Read the book: Java Testing and Design: From Unit Tests to Automated Web Tests

Read the documentation on the docs.pushtotest.com site

Building test agents to check email services for scalability and functionality

Learn about the changes and new features since the previous TestMaker release.

Additionally, check the testmaker_home/docs/lessons directory for tutorials and articles on using TestMaker.

Additional documentation, product downloads and updates are at www.PushToTest.com. While the TestMaker software is distributed under an open-source license, the documentation remains (c) 2004 PushToTest. All rights reserved.