tice22 wrote:Do you have any standard tests you recommend for use in monitoring web application availability?
One of the biggest issues is that people think that just visting a website is sufficient to confirm it. We think that is insufficient because a web server may be delivering pages but your web application may not be working.
The minimum we recommend for any commercial site is to do something like the following: (a) login with appropriate credentials; (b) navigate to two or three different pages; (c) select at least one thing to put into the shopping cart; (d) go to the checkout area; (e) attempt to make a purchase (using a known-to-be-invalid credit card); and (f) log out.
That kind of operation checks MORE than just the ability to serve pages -- it checks the ability of the site to delivery user-oriented results in a timely manner. That is what you REALLY want to know...whether a customer can get a purchase made.
That would be a minimal test, in our view. For other kinds of applications you would similar "deep" transactions -- depending on the application. But the same underlying principle applies: Make sure you are actually testing the application!
eValid Monitoring Team
by tice22 » Wed Sep 07, 2011 3:58 pm