Website Testing / Monitoring Service
Hello,
Our website is hosted by a vendor and we recently had an outage where the site was "down" for roughly ten hours due to none of the alarms having activated. The outage was with a backend process, so the site was returning a cryptic DB error to users. Since the site was responding with something other than a standard error code, none of the alarms went off.
I am looking for a monitoring service that would check the website periodically and emulate a few user actions - such as accessing a couple of pages and making certain a specific result comes back (i.e. not just pages of SQL errors). The goal is to detect a situation where the web server is operational but the content is not being delivered as expected.
Any ideas or suggestions? I prefer a hosted service, however if there is a tool I can run on one of my windows servers I am open to that as well. The key is that we do not host the site, so I don't have server level access to the site.
Thanks.
Our website is hosted by a vendor and we recently had an outage where the site was "down" for roughly ten hours due to none of the alarms having activated. The outage was with a backend process, so the site was returning a cryptic DB error to users. Since the site was responding with something other than a standard error code, none of the alarms went off.
I am looking for a monitoring service that would check the website periodically and emulate a few user actions - such as accessing a couple of pages and making certain a specific result comes back (i.e. not just pages of SQL errors). The goal is to detect a situation where the web server is operational but the content is not being delivered as expected.
Any ideas or suggestions? I prefer a hosted service, however if there is a tool I can run on one of my windows servers I am open to that as well. The key is that we do not host the site, so I don't have server level access to the site.
Thanks.
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ASKER
Thanks. I'm really looking for something that would be automated that would check in day and night and send notification in the event of a failed test.
Changes to the code are not an option at this time due to cost and complexity, as any number of things can fail, however they all would result in taking the site down for our users. Plus this is all hosted so I don't control the code.
Changes to the code are not an option at this time due to cost and complexity, as any number of things can fail, however they all would result in taking the site down for our users. Plus this is all hosted so I don't control the code.
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http://webtest.canoo.com/webtest/manual/WebTestHome.html
Canoo WebTest is a free Open Source tool for automated testing of web applications in a very effective way. Look at for a features' overview.
Canoo WebTest is a free Open Source tool for automated testing of web applications in a very effective way. Look at for a features' overview.
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wotcha buddy (arober11), been a while, work and no internet doesn't help lol
I am using Websitepulse to check Exchange and Sharepoit sites, but the do have a lot of options for websites check. Their support is mainly done by phone but it is very efficient and fast.
Try this link: http://www.websitepulse.com/targets/add.php?grouptype=3
Try this link: http://www.websitepulse.com/targets/add.php?grouptype=3
Monitis have a transaction monitoring feature which performs actual checks from within the real browser , from the same perspective as the end-user.
http://portal.monitis.com/index.php/transactions-monitoring
it is not free but a reliable one
http://portal.monitis.com/index.php/transactions-monitoring
it is not free but a reliable one
Web Applications
Web applications are systems that run in browsers that perform functions normally associated with other client-based programs. One of the most commonly used web applications is email; instead of downloading individual emails to a local machine, the data is shown through a website. Other examples of web applications are collaborative systems like a wiki or an online game.
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1. You need to use Firefox
2. Download Selenium IDE
3. Record some tests
4. Playback
This is the simple way. There is also iMacros which works on more platforms.
Selenium IDE is a simple record and playback features and is a addon to Firefox.
Selenium also have Selenium RC where you have to develop a test progrsm so you need to know a language.
If you have some java development skills then this can be done free as well using htmlunits.
Now this is not automated in that you have to trigger the tests. You need to design your tests carefully.
Regarding outages maybe you can change your code to email users on failure, and of course the logs investigated.