Knowledge Base

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Play Modes SOASTA CloudTest play modes provide "recommended" settings for both functional (General) and load (Load) testing. General settings provide verbose logging settings that come at a low-overhead in smaller, or functional, tests. Load settings omit verbose logging for all but the test composition object. For load testing, and in some other cases, verbose mode may be a lot more information than is useful for the test. Note that whenever Play mode is set from the Composition Editor toolbar, the corresponding composition properties in the Play Mode tab are also set.
To select a Play Mode from the toolbar: In the Composition Editor, click the Play Mode drop-down to select between General and Load settings.
The General play mode provides the following settings: Save Results checked with Force Garbage Collection unchecked and no Event Count Limit. Both Save Clip Element Details and Save Composition Element Details are checked, as is Track Garbage Collection. Track Garbage Collection determines whether the Java “Garbage Collection” histogram is computed during Composition play and displayed in the Result Details, Events List once composition play completes. This feature attempts to detect when garbage collections might have occurred, and how much memory was freed. For all logging objects, Verbose. Note: Check Preview Mode to stage the test, but not send any messages. This can be useful when setting up tests for multiple Maestros and/or Results Services. The default for the Composition Editor’s Preview Mode in both "General" and "Load" modes is FALSE.
The Load play mode provides the following settings: Save Results and Force Garbage Collection checked and no Event Count Limit. Both Save Clip Element Details and Save Composition Element Details are unchecked. For Test Composition, Verbose. For all logging objects, None. Note: The default for the Composition Editor’s Preview Mode in both "General" and "Load" modes is FALSE.
Specifying a Custom Play Mode With your test open in the Composition Editor, click the Properties tab in the lower toolbar. The General tab displays in the sub-pane on the right. Click the Play Settings tab.
On the left of the tab are the Preview mode box, Prompt for Result Name and Description box, Play mode and Failure Action drop-downs. Optionally, perform any of the optional steps: Check Preview mode to to stage the test, but not send any messages. Check Prompt for result name and description to receive a prompt each time the composition is played to enter the name and description for the Result for that play. Naming results can make them easier to identifier at a later time. Select a Play Mode other than the one current set (e.g. choose from among General, Load, or Custom). Note that it is not necessary to set "Custom" mode as the Play Mode will automatically be set to Custom if a non-standard setting is chosen in the Play Settings tab. Note: If Prompt for result name and description is checked, the Result Name and Description box appears whenever the composition is played with the default date/time based result name shown in the Result Name field.
Select a Failure action from the drop-down. The default is to honor component settings. If the failure action is set to Honor the individual settings for the components in the Composition, all current component settings are honored. If the failure action is set to Never halt on error, regardless of component settings, the composition will not stop if errors occur (overriding failure settings in components). If the failure action is set to Never halt on errors at the Clip level and above the current repeat of a container only will fail. This value can be used in cases where clips, bands, or tracks have repeats that should be able to play even if one repeat fails. Using this setting means that each repeat of a clip-level container or above (e.g. a band, track, or test clip can pass or fail separately from other repeats of the same object. When this option is set each individual repeat for a clip-level or higher item behaves as if “be recorded only” was set on it (regardless of the actual component-level settings). This option is the default setting for Load mode. If the failure action is set to Always halt on error, regardless of component settings, the composition will stop if errors occur (overriding failure settings in components).
To use custom settings, first check the Edit Advanced Settings box. Once this box is checked any of the tab settings can be modified. Changing a setting causes "Custom" to appear as the selection in both the Play Mode drop-down and in the Play Mode drop-down on the toolbar above.
Both Composition Element and Clip Element results can be separately logged in the Play Settings tab. This ability to customize component-level results logging leads to significant SOASTA CloudTest performance improvements on both the server and client side, while preserving access to crucial analysis data that you want. Uncheck either Save Composition Element Details to turn off logging details for bands, tracks, and other composition elements; or uncheck Save Clip Element Details to turn off logging details for chains, delays, and other clip elements. Once a setting is changed, Play Mode switches to Custom.
With Edit Advanced Settings checked, you can revise any of the Logging settings in the right portion of the tab. SOASTA CloudTest's General play mode provides default verbose logging of all its activities that is quite detailed, and in most cases, provides valuable information for little cost. These component-level settings control how much information is logged to the result object for each category of information presented. Use the Change All button to change all logging settings to the specified drop-down setting. Like other test clip elements, collection containers (e.g. Chain, Page, Group, Transaction, If-Then-Else, and Switch) have their own per Composition logging settings in the Composition Editor > Properties > General tab, Logging section. Containers are set to Verbose while in General play mode. When play mode is set to Load, then logging on collection containers is set to None.
For example, setting the script level to Info means that, for scripts, all logging of type Info and above (Error, Statistics, and Info) is enabled, while all logging of type Verbose is disabled.