Application turns

[lvhsniffer]

In an attempt to uncover poorly written applications, what
do you find the most effient way to identify the amount of application turns a client-server application performs.
I have been using ART but curious if there are other ways to accomplish this.
Thanks....Rich

 

[rwullems]

Hi,

Check the following product from compuware

http://www.compuware.com/products/vantage/appexpert/preview.htm

This can probably help you out. Have no idea about the costs, but probably expensive.
Robert Robert A.H. Wullems
Sniffer University Instructor
SCM / CNX / MCP
Citee Education
the Netherlands

 

[lvhsniffer]

Thanks for the tip Robert,
The funny thing is I just reveived a copy of this very software you suggested. This does look like what I'm looking for but with budgets these days, I would be very interested in knowing what can I do with my current sniffer pro software? Anything?
Thanks, Rich

 

[mpennac]

There is a lot you can do with the Sniffer as far as app turns goes, but it really depends on the type of application you are looking at.

For example:

With a web based application you can setup a filter to capture HTTP GET packets by looking for ASCII GET at offset 0x36 (36 Hex).

For SMB based applications you can look for SMB Reads. Sorry don't know that offset and pattern off the top of my head.

For SQL based applications you can set filters up on Select Statements.

The end result is the number of requests sent for a specific transaction. You EXACTLY right about looking at application turns as a source of poor performance in applications. Applications that have lots of turns (request/response) packets are most impacted by latency, not bandwidth. Most people with throw bandwidth at a problem and then are disappointed when it does not solve the slowdowns.

I have used Application Expert quite a bit and agree it is a great product for clearly illustrating to management and programmers the problems with the applications. However it is not cheap.

A product I love for doing application testing that is very reasonably priced is The Cloud by Shurna,

http://www.shunra.com.

The product allows you to simulate a WAN circuit (9.6kbps to 10mbps) on a workstation. The workstation acts as a router and delays the packets based on how you set up the program. Many organizations will connect two routers back-to-back with a T-1 and claim they are doing WAN testing. Unfortuantely, they are missing the most important part of the equation, latency!

Shunra is a great tool to quickly evaluate an application's performance on the network before deployment. If it sucks, then it is time to filter down on the requests and determine the number of requests per transaction. For each request, you are going to suffer the full roundtrip delay of the circuit.

If there are lots of database turns, try to get the programmers to used stored procedures that are executed on the DB server instead of moving all of that data across the network.

Hope this helps.

Mike
mike@netprospecialists.com

http://www.netprospecialists.com

- The website blows, but much more will be coming soon, including trace file examples.