When I started my career in performance testing around 12-13 years ago, Mercury Web Tours was widely used to practice the concepts of LoadRunner. After the acquisition of Mercury Interactive by HPE, and then to Micro Focus, the Mercury Web Tours slowly reached its extinction. It is still available in the ADM Marketplace, but the last release was in 2017. Advantage Online Shopping replaced Web Tours in 2017 with the inception version of 1.1.2. In this blog post, we are going to see Advantage Online Shopping Setup for Performance Testing locally and also see about its new features.
Table of Contents
Download Advantage Online Shopping (AOS)
AOS is free to download from the ADM Marketplace. You need a valid account to login into the marketplace to download the package.
Head to https://marketplace.microfocus.com/appdelivery/content/advantage-online-shopping-aos-demo-application, then login with your credentials.
Click on the Download button to download the zip file.
Prerequisites
AOS works only on Windows OS (7, 10, 2008R2). Windows 11 also work. You need at least 2 CPU cores with 4GB memory.
For Docker installation, head to https://advantageonlineshopping.com/#/version
AOS also requires a Postgres database. To download Postgres, go to https://www.postgresql.org/download/windows/ and follow the instructions.
Optionally, you can install pgAdmin to interact with the database.
By default, Postgres uses the postgres/admin credentials. If you are changing the credentials, make a note of it. During the AOS installation, it is required to enter the database credentials.
After the successful installation of Postgres, AOS might not be able to connect to Postgres. If you are facing any issue, there are two ways to solve:
- Launch psql and enter the following command
ALTER USER postgres VALID UNTIL 'infinity';
- Go to
C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\14\data, openpg_hba.conffile, then edit the METHOD totrustas shown below.
After editing the conf file, go to Run > services.msc, find the postgres service and restart it.
Installing AOS
Installing AOS is straight forward. Launch the downloaded EXE file and follow the onscreen instructions. While configuring the Postgres database, test the db connections for successful installation.
Once the installation is successful, AOS app can be launched from the Start menu. Admininistrative priviliege is mandatory to launch the application.
Wait for couple of minutes, then launch localhost:8080 from your favorite browser.
What’s new in AOS 3.2.7?
AOS 3.27 is packed with loads of features to learn the concepts across Micro Focus products.
- Integration with AOB (registration)
- GPS location simulation
- Fingerprint Simulation
- FaceID simulation
- Integration with AOB (purchase)
- Swagger enrichment
- Photo simulation
- Video Simulation
- Audio/video streaming
To use the audio/video streaming and simulation you need to download the mobile app which is available in both iOS and Android. Navigate to https://advantageonlineshopping.com/#/version to download the app.
AOS Configuration
AOS comes with powerful configuration across front-end, back-end, performance, functionality etc.
To launch the AOS config, head to the Start menu and run AOS Management Console with administrator privilege.
The management credential is admin/adm1n.
.NET console is available as a Windows app and via the web. The management console helps to configure the products, price, images, performance aspects, users management and more.
To configure the performance parameters, click on Configuration > Performance where you can configure database performance, max concurrent users, SLAs and more
A few parameters have the value Tip which means, you need to read the description for the instructions.
Management Console Limitations
- Special Offers and Popular Items in the Windows app not yet implemented
- Web console are also limited only to Configuration, other pages are yet to implement
Conclusion
The AOS demo app helps to learn the concepts of Micro Focus products such as LoadRunner, Mobile Center, Fortify, StormRunner, AppPulse and more. It also helps to configure the Network Virtualization. The iOS and Android apps are handy for learning the mobile testing concepts. The AOS demo app gels with the Micro Focus ecosystem. It comes with a Docker. flavor, but not with the Kubernetes deployment. No feature to integrate with the APM or Observability solutions. If you do not have the time to install and maintain the local instance of AOS, you can opt for the public facing app at https://advantageonlineshopping.com.