Does LoadRunner measure UI response time?

Question

I know LoadRunner is used for system responses but I wonder whether it measures also e.g. rendering time (thousands of items in large lists etc.). I guess it could be done just by verifying that particular object appeared in the UI but then, I think LoadRunner does not run browsers and only sends recorded data. I would be very greateful for any input. Thanks!

Answer 1

LoadRunner has many ways to measure rendering time. Starting at the top of the stack and going down

• Citrix/RDP Virtual User. Sync is on bitmap with this type so the bitmap has to be fully rendered to the client
• GUI Virtual User. This has been part of LoadRunner since version 1. First it was XRunner, then it became WinRunner and in the Current product it is QuickTest Professional. GUI Virtual Users were quite popular in the thick client server era and now that the web clients are getting thicker and richer it is making a return. Generally you are only going to run a handful of these while the remainder are transport level users
• TruClient (LoadRunner 11 on). Runs the full firefox stack, including rendering.

As you move up the stack to run a full client there are tradeoffs. The first is that the resource cost per virtual user becomes larger as you have to run the full client instead of just reproducing the conversational behavior to the server. If you have a browser that is 500MB plus your sampling add ins you can see that even on a 4GB host with shared execution code you are still not going to achieve a whole lot of users per host. If you look at QTP based GUI Virtual Users then you are looking at a sinngle virtual user per OS instance.

Your statement, " I think LoadRunner does not run browsers and only sends recorded data" when you look at both the full firefox stack in the TruClient user type as well as the ability to run GUI Virtual Users operating against whatever browser you choose pretty much causes this statement to be set aside.

Now the next big question. Assuming that it is not your code and it is the rendering of the browswer which is slow, what will you be able to do to change this behavior to make your app run faster? Can you change IE? Do you have the time, skills, budget to start digging into the source for Firefox or Chrome to find the slow code and update it?