Tips for IBM Rational Robot VU scripting

Jirong Hu
10 May 2005

Learn about some important concepts in VU scripting and put the programming tips to work in your projects.

VU script is the scripting language in IBM® Rational® Robot used for load and performance testing. This article aims to demystify some important aspects of VU scripting for load testing typical Web applications. The articles in Scott Barber's two series "User experience, not metrics" and "Beyond performance testing" are the best materials available on performance testing using Robot. This article supplements those, and I will refer to them here. I will also refer to UAT_Login.s, a sample login script I recorded to illustrate points in this article. Download the script at the bottom of this article.
VU script development normally starts after you have chosen the workload model for your particular load-testing project. It consists of these steps:

1. Record and split the scripts.
2. Search through each script to replace the hard-coded values with variables.
3. Unit test the scripts.

The following tips highlight some of the areas you should pay attention to when you start to modify the scripts.
Read the full article on IBM developeWorks: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/05/510_robot/