Glossary of Terminology
The table below lists terminology used within the StressTester™ GUI and the Online Learning Centre.
| Term | Description |
| Control Step | A User Journey step that does not make a request against the application; instead it contains Flow Control configuration to vary the route of simulated users through the User Journey. |
| Dynamic Content |
A setting on a Step Group that tells StressTester™ to act like a browser and automatically scan the application’s response for embedded content (such as images and cascading style-sheets) and subsequently request these. See Dynamic Content for more details. |
| Dynamic Data |
StressTester™ facility to vary the data provided to the application. A Dynamic Data item can be thought of as a parameter. See Dynamic Data for more details. |
| Flow Control |
StressTester™ facility to vary the route the simulated user takes through the User Journey. See Flow Control for more details. |
| GUI |
The StressTester™ graphical user interface. Depending on the license installed, the GUI will run in ‘Designer’ or ‘Controller’ mode. See GUI License for more details. |
| Inclusion |
A part of a User Journey that cannot be executed on its own but that can be used (included) into one or more User Journeys. This allows common parts of business transactions – such as logging into an application – to be configured once and reused in many different User Journeys. See Inclusions for more details. |
| Injector | The runtime component that simulates users to generate load on an application. |
| Monitor Agent | The runtime component that executes Resource Monitors in order to monitor the system under test and provide information that diagnoses the cause(s) for performance issues. |
| Monitor Configuration | Specifies how a Monitor Set is executed against a specific implementation of technology (e.g. against a specific database installation). |
| Monitor Pack | A set of Resource Monitors concerned with the same technology. Monitor Packs exist for different operating systems, database systems, web servers, etc. |
| Monitor Set | A sub-set of the Resource Monitors within a Monitor Pack. |
| Navigation Panel | Horizontally, the middle panel in every Workspace that lists the information within the workspace as a tree-view. Selecting a node in the tree will update what is displayed in the Workspace’s main panel. |
| Step | A single request against an application (with the exception of Control Steps which do not make a request against the application). |
| Step Group | A logical grouping of Steps. When testing web applications, a Step Group is equivalent to a web page. |
| User Journey | A simulated business transaction consisting of Step Groups and Control Steps. |
| Resource Monitor | A measurement of a specific metric in the monitored technology (e.g. the CPU usage of a monitored operating system). |
| Response Processor |
An advanced (and rarely used StressTester™ facility) allowing an application response to be passed to an external program for further processing. Please contact Support for further details. |
| Success Validation |
Verification that the response from the application contains the expected data. See Success Validation for more details. |
| Test Run Configuration |
Definition of a performance test including the User Journeys to execute, the load profile that should be applied, the locations from which load should be generated and the Monitor Configurations that should run as part of the test. See Designing Your Test Run Configuration for more details. |
| Workspace |
An area within the StressTester™ GUI concerned with a particular aspect of the configuration, execution or analysis of a performance test. There are 4 workspaces within the StressTester™ GUI. See GUI Workspaces for more details. |