LoadRunner | Holiday Readyness

Most large B2C enterprises perform, holiday readiness to make sure the site remains stable and can handle the holiday web traffic smoothly. As a part of the exercise multiple load test runs are performed  and usually  monitored in a performance environment with production data and any bottle necks and performance issues found during this are fixed.

Important Analysis pointers:
Java Garbage collection: If there are increases in response time in bursts. it can be attributed to Garbage collection.
The graphs for hits per second should follow a similar pattern to Throughput otherwise there is something in
Correlating failed transactions with errors.

Monitor CPU/IO/Memory during load tests: It is a good idea to run this every 30 seconds for the duration of the load tests. This is for App server and DB server.

vmstat - reports information about processes, memory, paging, block IO, traps, and cpu activity
iostat - Used for reporting CPU statistics and input/output statistics for devices, partitions and network filesystems (NFS)
Load Runner has 3 main components:
VU Gen (Virtual User Generator)
--Load generators are installed on multiple machines to spread the load for generating the traffic.
--Depending on the traffic required, this could change but usually 3-5
Load Runner Controller (Console)
--This is the main terminal that can be used to connect to consoles , Load scripts and run load runner tests.
Analysis
--This is used to view multiple charts and graphs for analysis data points from tests run.

Some Key Terminology when using Load Runner:
Virtual User & Distribution of virtual users: Virtual users are used to emulate the behavior of real users.
Transaction Mix:  This is based on business scenarios. Usually this is divided among-st various scripts based on traffic patterns from web analytics (Omniture\Google\CoreMetrics, etc any of these)
Ramp up\Ram down:  The load on the performance site is gradually increased and gradually decreased. Gradually increasing helps with cached pages for accurate test results.
Load is usually gradually increased and usually a 2-3  interval is provided to add virtual users.
Thinking Time: This is the time between 2 actions. In trying to emulate human behavior, it is the time, human takes to think between page clicks.
Total Duration of test = RampUp+Duration of load test+RampDown

Key Analysis parameters:
Response Time per Transaction: Time taken for the application to complete a transaction or a business scenario. This time includes Network Transmission+ Network Latency+Web Server processing time+App Server Processing time+ DB server Processing time.
This is very helpful parameter to determine during peak loads, who the system would really behave
Hits/Second: Number of requests hitting webs server per second. This is helpful in conjunction with transaction time to see, how the performance of the site behaves as the number of hits/sec increases.

Through Put: Is the amount of data in kilobytes received by a user per second

HTTP Response Counts: Most valid responses are 200, 303 (redirection) and It is a good idea to keep the tab on 403 (forbidden), 404 (page not found), 500 (Internal server error)

Error count: Keeps track of error counts, this is a good measure to make sure there are no application server errors, This is really helpful, if the correct build and database changes are not present in performance.

Locale | Importance of LangPair !!

Locale is a combination of country and language and is very useful when creating a commerce site for multiple countries as it helps define globalized cultural attributes for various features address, number formatting, currency formatting, character classification, date\time formatting.etc.

Using in JSP with fmt tag:
fmt:setLocale value="${CommandContext.locale}" />

If you are using fmt for number formatting\date time formatting. Can set the locale from command context.
e.g. locale="en_US";

If you need a snippet to create a locale from language and country:
String language=locale.substring(0, locale.indexOf(LOCALE_SEPERATOR));
String country=locale.substring(locale.indexOf(LOCALE_SEPERATOR)+1,locale.length());
Locale localeObj = new Locale(language, country);

LangPair:

This is very useful when supporting a multi-language sites. All the relations for a particular Storetntity e.g. CATENTDESC, if does not have an entry for all the SKU descriptions, for the language in context. It would fall back to the default language in the langpair.

e.g.:
insert into langpair values (20120, -2, -1, 0, null);

Read/Write Order access to users from same organization

I am sure you have seen a similar error when trying to give access to commands for different roles.

Do not just override the command and return null from getResources() method that would void any access controls on the order commands associated and could causes security issues, the correct way of fixing such issues, is to figure out the correct PolicyGroup and create custom policies with the corresponding roles. An example would be as below. In this case, you need to give users Buyer(buy-side) role to create\copy orders.
CMN1501E: User does not have the authority to perform action "com.ibm.commerce.order.commands.OrderCopyCmd" on resource "com.ibm.commerce.user.objects._Organization_Stub" for command "AjaxOrderCopy


<Policy Name="CustomUsersFromSameBuyerOrgExecuteOrderCreateCommandsOnOrganizationResource"
         OwnerID="RootOrganization"
         UserGroup="AllUsers"
         ActionGroupName="OrderCreateCommands"
         ResourceGroupName="OrderDataResourceGroup"
         RelationGroupName="Buyer (buy-side)->BuyerOrganizationalEntity"
         PolicyType="groupableStandard">
    </Policy>      
     <Policy Name="CustomUsersFromSameBuyerOrgExecuteOrderCreateReadCommandsOnOrganizationResource"
         OwnerID="RootOrganization"
         UserGroup="AllUsers"
         ActionGroupName="OrderReadCommands"
         ResourceGroupName="OrderDataResourceGroup"
         RelationGroupName="Buyer (buy-side)->BuyerOrganizationalEntity"
         PolicyType="groupableStandard">
    </Policy>      
<Policy Name="CustomUsersFromSameBuyerOrgExecuteOrderCreateWriteCommandsOnOrganizationResource"
         OwnerID="RootOrganization"
         UserGroup="AllUsers"
         ActionGroupName="OrderWriteCommands"
         ResourceGroupName="OrderDataResourceGroup"
         RelationGroupName="Buyer (buy-side)->BuyerOrganizationalEntity"
         PolicyType="groupableStandard">
    </Policy>

    <PolicyGroup Name="CommonShoppingPolicyGroup" OwnerID="RootOrganization">
      <!-- Define policies in this policy group -->
      <PolicyGroupPolicy   Name="CustomUsersFromSameBuyerOrgExecuteOrderCreateCommandsOnOrganizationResource" PolicyOwnerID="RootOrganization" />
      <PolicyGroupPolicy   Name="CustomUsersFromSameBuyerOrgExecuteOrderCreateReadCommandsOnOrganizationResource" PolicyOwnerID="RootOrganization" />
      <PolicyGroupPolicy   Name="CustomUsersFromSameBuyerOrgExecuteOrderCreateWriteCommandsOnOrganizationResource" PolicyOwnerID="RootOrganization" />
    </PolicyGroup>

Order history read access users from same organization.

Read only access to users belonging to same organization and Organization Participant role for order history related databeans, the XML policies below is from the reference link below but they have an issue where on the role Buyer (buy-side) role name so that's fixed.
Buyer(buy-side) roles needs to defined on the organization using Org admin console.
if there is an hierarchy of organizations and the bottom organization is the parent organization for the users. All roles have to be defined to Organizations from Top-Down.
Add the xml fragments below to resource_acpolicies.xml and run ACPLoad.
Add new policy to allow participants to display the order beans for others in the organization:
Relation group: This defines all roles in this case Buyer(buy-side) to BuyingOrganizationalEntity

     <RelationGroup Name="Buyer (buy-side)->BuyerOrganizationalEntity" OwnerID="RootOrganization">
        <RelationCondition><![CDATA[
        <profile>
        <openCondition name="RELATIONSHIP_CHAIN">
        <parameter name="ROLE" value="Buyer (buy-side)"/>
        <parameter name="RELATIONSHIP"
        value="BuyingOrganizationalEntity"/>
        </openCondition>
        </profile>
        ]]></RelationCondition>
    </RelationGroup>
   
 Create a new Policy and use the RelationGroupName created above to the ResourceGroup, OrderDatabeanResourceGroup and ActionGroup, DisplayDatabeanActionGroup

        <Policy Name="ParticipantsOfOrgDisplayOrderDatabeanResourceGroup"
            OwnerID="RootOrganization"
            UserGroup="AllUsers"
            ActionGroupName="DisplayDatabeanActionGroup"
            ResourceGroupName="OrderDatabeanResourceGroup"
            RelationGroupName="ParticipantOf->BuyerOrganizationalEntity"
            PolicyType="groupableStandard">
    </Policy>
    <Policy Name="BuyersOfOrgDisplayOrderDatabeanResourceGroup"
            OwnerID="RootOrganization"
            UserGroup="AllUsers"
            ActionGroupName="DisplayDatabeanActionGroup"
            ResourceGroupName="OrderDatabeanResourceGroup"
            RelationGroupName="Buyer (buy-side)->BuyerOrganizationalEntity"
            PolicyType="groupableStandard">
    </Policy>
     
  Subscribe organizations to the new Access Control policies:         
     <PolicyGroup Name="B2BPolicyGroup" OwnerID="RootOrganization">
        <PolicyGroupPolicy
        Name="ParticipantsOfOrgDisplayOrderDatabeanResourceGroup"
        PolicyOwnerID="RootOrganization" />
        <PolicyGroupPolicy Name=
        "BuyersOfOrgDisplayOrderDatabeanResourceGroup"
        PolicyOwnerID="RootOrganization" />
    </PolicyGroup>   

Once the ACPLoad is run, you can validate using a SQL query.
select * from acpolicy where policyname like 'BuyersOfOrgDisplayOrderDatabeanResourceGroup'
select * from acpolicy where policyname like 'ParticipantsOfOrgDisplayOrderDatabeanResourceGroup'

References:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/library/techarticles/0908_callaghan/0908_callaghan1.html
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/library/techarticles/0805_callaghan/0805_callaghan.html

Generated columns UP_* for case insensitive search in V7

You might not find anything while searching about this info center. At least not when I did the search.

In V7 data migration generates some new generated fields and these fields are tablename.UP_*  columns. These fields are used by out of the box case insensitive searches. The grouping functions such as to_lower or to_upper are expensive operations for search when dealing with vast data and that is one of the performance enhancements in V7.

I am pretty sure, if you use out of the box data migration tool for migrating to V7. It should take care of  these generated fields. These fields should not be populated from code, there are triggers in database that would take care of populating these fields.

e.g.
  "UP_MFNAME" VARCHAR(64) GENERATED ALWAYS AS (UPPER(MFNAME)) ,
  "UP_MFPARTNUMBER" VARCHAR(64) GENERATED ALWAYS AS (UPPER(MFPARTNUMBER))
  "UP_PARTNUMBER" VARCHAR(64) GENERATED ALWAYS AS (UPPER(PARTNUMBER)) )

References:
https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21498502
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/0203adamache/0203adamache.html
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/db2luw/v9r7/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.db2.luw.admin.dbobj.doc%2Fdoc%2Fc0020109.html

Order state diagram !!

Orde state Diagram
This is probably one of the interesting info center article regarding the state diagram of order status. It shows pretty good transition between states. If you decide to use custom statuses as a best practice choose lower case letters.




Reference:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wchelp/v7r0m0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.commerce.developer.doc%2Frefs%2Frosordstattran.htm

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wchelp/v7r0m0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.commerce.user.doc%2Fconcepts%2Fcossostat.htm

Troubleshooting User log-in and organization relationship

CommerceSrvr E AccManager isAllowed CMN1501E: User 6002 does not have the authority to perform action "Display" on resource "com.ibm.commerce.user.beans.UserDataBean" for command "Logon".
 CommerceSrvr A DataBeanManager directActivate(DataBean,CommandContext) The user does not have the authority to run this command "com.ibm.commerce.user.beans.UserRegistrationDataBean".
t have the authority to perform action "Display" on resource "com.ibm.commerce.user.beans.OrganizationDataBean"

Troubleshooting: The above error was caused as there was a missing relationship in MBRREL to the parent organization.

DN should be lowercase and no spaces between orgs.

If you have Manually imported orgentity table through data load, The DN relationship is stored between the ancestor and descendant in MBRREL. If the tree has multiple parents, all the parent-child relationship should be defined in MBRREL.

A member_id from MEMBER table can be a ORGENTITY_ID, USERS_ID,MBRGRP_ID

 Some queries to help for debugging:

select * from mbrrel where descendant_id=;


select * from orgentity where orgentity_id in (
select ancestor_id from mbrrel where descendant_id=);

USERS:

 MBRREL; ( USER to all parent organization relationship as per dn is loaded here)

MBRROLE & ROLE; (Role for each user is assigned to an organization, e.g. -29 for registered customer)

SELECT DN FROM USERS (DN SHOULD BE THE CORRECT ORGENTITY)