What is ZebraTester?

ZebraTester is a scripting tool that offers a range of features to make your work easier.

The scripts can be used for load testing and monitoring. The Engine for both Load Testing and Monitoring is also part of the ZebraTester Tool.

It's powerful GUI allows you to create sophisticated, custom load test/monitoring scripts easily and intuitively.

All components are platform-agnostic across Windows, macOS, and Linux.

You can use Apica ZebraTester standalone running in your own infrastructure or with the Apica LoadTest Portal for the advanced team with continuous testing features.

ZT Overview

Graphical User Interface

Apica ZebraTester™ contains a unique powerful GUI which does not require you to learn any scripting language. In addition, no implementation of complicated regular expressions is required, even if you need to extract and assign user-specific dynamic session parameters or to consider any other user-specific data such as authentication credentials.

All of the rich product features are directly accessible with a few mouse clicks from the high-performance, user-friendly graphical user interface. This eases and simplifies significantly the workflow to create realistic load tests.

Automatic generation of custom load test scripts – based on your click-by-click GUI actions.
Integrated wizards for extracting and assigning user-specific session parameters.
Integrated support of input files containing user-specific data.
Integrated support for user-specific execution control, response verification, and error actions.

Web Standards Support

ZebraTester supports these Web Standards

HTTP and HTTPS
CGI parameters
HTML forms
- HTML hyperlinks
- HTML redirects
J2EE URL Rewriting
AJAX Technology
JSON data
XML and SOAP data
WebDAV data
Google Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) data
Adobe Flex/AMF
GWT
WebSocket
HTTP Protocol Extensions
- Client-side caching of network connections (keep-alive),
- Compressed request and response data (gzip, deflate)
- Automatic session cookies processing
- File Upload and Download
- Outbound/cascaded HTTP(S) proxy server.
SSL/TLS Protocol
- TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1 , TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3.
- Configurable SSL/TLS session timeout
- “Server Name Indication” (SNI)
- Client certificates
- Certificates from PKCS#11 Devices
- TLS Session Tickets
Parallel execution of HTTP(S) requests similar to web browsers.
DNS TTL and DNS round robin.

Authentication Methods

HTML Form-Based Login
Basic Authentication
Digest Authentication
NTLM - supports CyberArk password vault as well for this
SSL Authentication using X509 Client Certificates in PKCS#12 format , DER or PEM encoded format
SSL Authentication using Smart Cards and HSMS (PKCS#11 security devices)
Kerberos with SPNEGO

Non-standardized authentication methods can be supported by developing your own “plug-ins”

Proxy Recorder

The universal HTTP(S) proxy recorder supports capturing any web traffic, produced from any web browser, or produced from any technical web client application, running on any computer, smartphone or tablet.

After capturing a recorded session, all of the captured data can be filtered, post-processed and functionally enhanced by using the powerful GUI.

The refined session can then be turned automatically into a ready-for-use load test script which can be executed directly as a customized load test.

Test Features

Configurable DNS servers, DNS cache and DNS hosts file per executed load test
Configurable SSL/TLS settings per executed load test
Detailed real-time statistics
See all error details in real-time: Error analysis can actually be performed during a running load test
Manually modify variable values and flow control in real-time
Real-time comments
Suspend and resume load test execution
Manually increase and decrease the number of simulated users in real-time
Conditional execution of web pages / URLs
Simulate slow network connections
Integrated scheduler
Concurrent test execution: Run multiple load tests at one time on the same infrastructure
Integrated overload detection of load generators
Support of multiple TCP/IP addresses per load generator
Clustering of load generators

Test Measurement Features

Sampling rates up to 100%
- Store the complete data from every test.
Measures in-depth values for each HTTP(S) request
- DNS resolve time
- TCP/IP connect time
- SSL handshake time
- Request transmit time
- Time to First Byte of the response header
- Response header received time
- Response content received time.
Measures internal statistics inside DNS, TCP/IP, SSL, and HTTP layers.
- Examples
  - DNS resolve rate
  - Abbreviated SSL handshake rate
  - HTTP Keep-Alive efficiency
  - Inner throughput diagram of each received HTTP content response.
All measured errors contain snapshots of all of the current HTTP data
- Request header
- Request content
- Response header
- Response content.
All measured errors contain also layer-specific context information
- Outbound TCP/IP address
- Outbound TCP/IP port
- SSL session ID
- The layer-specific execution step of the failed HTTP(S) request.
  - Example: If an empty web page is returned, you can see clearly if this is caused by a network problem or caused by an overload of the stressed web server.
Each measured error contains also a snapshot of
- The actual values of all user-specific variables and a snapshot-statistic about the activity of all other users at error time.
The measurements can be complemented with additional statistics from Apica Inside Agents which can collect real-time performance information from multiple in-house sources
- Operating systems (OS performance data)
- Databases
- Network
- System management frameworks
  - NMP
  - ARM
  - APIs
- Application management modules

Test Automation

Automate both test creation (recording and post-processing of HTTP/S sessions) and even the test execution.

Test Creation:

Automate by calling the REST-API of the proxy recorder and by triggering the execution of self- developed “recorder plug-ins”.

Test Execution:

Automate by calling the “PrxJob” utility.

Up to 86 different commands can be used in a self-written shell or *.bat scripts to start and synchronize load test executions.

Clustering Load Generators

You can combine local, remote or cloud-based load generators into clusters.

Almost infinitely scalable:

More than 300 load generators can be combined to form a single cluster.

Each load generator can be a member of several clusters.

Apica supports multiple locations AND mixed operating systems.
Split user account credentials and X509 client certificates across cluster members.
Easy to use and easy to operate.
All measured data are merged into one single test result.

Reporting Features

Generate PDF reports from Load Test results.

Comments can complement each report.

Create your report templates with your corporate logos on the cover sheet.

Up to 24 different diagrams and statistic types are available for reports.

Compare the results of different test runs to verify the efficiency of any implemented tuning measures; also visualize the response time behavior and the stability of the stressed web application under different load conditions.

Load Test Plug-ins

Extend the functionality during load test execution by creating custom load test plug-ins.

Plug-in creation Wizard
Some example added functionalities using custom load test plug-ins:
- Perform real-time calculations during the execution of a load test (e.g. in order to support a proprietary challenge-response authentication algorithm).
- Access external databases during the execution of a load test
- Add additional, previously measured, data to the load test result and present them as additional XY- diagrams in the GUI and in PDF reports
- Create your own test-specific error conditions

Related Page: ZebraTester Plug-in Handbooks

Context-Sensitive Help

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