User Scenarios
The user scenario defines the type of user, as well as the actions that the user performs. The first step in authoring performance test cases is to identify the user types that are involved. A user type is a category of typical business user. You arrive at a list of user types by categorizing all users based on the transactions they perform. For example, you may have call center users who respond to service requests and call center users who make outbound sales calls. For each user type, define a typical scenario. It is important that scenarios accurately reflect the typical set of actions taken by a typical user because scenarios that are too simple or too complex skew the test results. There is a trade-off that must be balanced between the effort to create and maintain a complex scenario and accurately simulating a typical user. Complex scenarios require more time-consuming scripting while scenarios that are too simple may result in excessive database contention – because all simulated users will simultaneously try to access the small number of tables that support a few operations.
Most user types fall into one of two usage patterns:
Multiple-iteration users tend to log in once, and then cycle through a business process multiple times (for example, call center representatives). The Siebel application has a number of optimizations that take advantage of persistent application state during a user session, and it is important to accurately simulate this behavior to obtain representative scalability results. The scenario should show the user logging in, iterating over a set of transactions, and then logging out.
Single-iteration scenarios emulate the behavior of occasional users such as e-commerce buyers, partners at a partner portal, or employees accessing ERM functions such as employee locator. These users typically execute an operation once and then leave the Siebel environment, and so do not take advantage of the persistent state optimizations for multiple-iteration users. The scenario should show the user logging in, performing a single transaction, and then logging out.
The following image shows the user wait times for the following scenario:
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User Type: Incoming Call Creates Opportunity and Quote.
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Iteration: Multiple Iteration.
For example, the Go_New_Call operation has a wait time of 5 seconds, the New_Contact operation has a wait time of 60 seconds, and the New_Oppty operation has a wait time 45 seconds. It is important that wait times be distributed throughout the scenario, and reflect the time that an actual user takes to perform the operation.
