# New to website programming and need to do load testing.  Will this work?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-to-website-programming-and-need-to-do-load-testing-will-this-work/141146>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 7, 2002, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-to-website-programming-and-need-to-do-load-testing-will-this-work/141146 "2002-12-07T17:17:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2002, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-to-website-programming-and-need-to-do-load-testing-will-this-work/141146/1 "2002-12-07T17:17:04Z")

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Can I run a reasonably useful load test on a website by simply passing large string (as in Java) objects through the port? I’d be embedding the tab characters where appropriate.

But how do you simulate a mouse action?

We have website testing software at my company, but it seems better suited for testing non-interactive webistes, like online dictionaries and encyclopedias, where the data goes only one way. The site I need to test involves heavy data entry and submission by the user.

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**Author:** ![DarrenS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/977dab/32.png) [@DarrenS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarrenS)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2002, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-to-website-programming-and-need-to-do-load-testing-will-this-work/141146/2 "2002-12-07T18:58:32Z")

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If you’re in the Microsoft environment, [this](http://webtool.rte.microsoft.com/) free tool might help. You can probably modify it to work with any server environment since it just emulates browser requests.

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**Author:** ![BioHazard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3bc359/32.png) [@BioHazard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BioHazard)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2002, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-to-website-programming-and-need-to-do-load-testing-will-this-work/141146/3 "2002-12-07T22:08:33Z")

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MicroSoft makes a free Denial Of Service tool now? Wow.  
Bill Gates is a really smart guy.

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**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2002, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-to-website-programming-and-need-to-do-load-testing-will-this-work/141146/4 "2002-12-09T20:18:24Z")

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Great freeware, **DarrenS**. Thanks for your reply.

Now, after recording a script I find that it assumes that the website is localhost, if I’m not mistaken. I thought it would default to the website to which I surfed at the beginning of the recording process, but apparently that isn’t what happens. So how do I make the script surf to the right website?

I tried the obvious approach of changing the first line of the generated script, but it didn’t work.