What are your best practices for stylizing services?

Question

Does anyone have best practices regarding service symbolization, labeling, etc?  I have a number of notions I've gathered from various classes, conferences, but nothing concrete.  We would also really like to test our changes using some kind of performance testing software.  We've been looking at System Test  and Jmeter but have had almost no success.  Any thoughts on that would also be appreciated.

Thanks,

Brandon

ChrisSmith7 · Answer

Brandon,

I have been looking into writing unit tests of late, though it is still a work in progress. Selenium isn't limited to Python - you can use multiple languages. There's actually a GitHub using Intern + Selenium for ArcGIS (this looks geared towards unit/function testing):

DavidSpriggs/intern-tutorial-esri-jsapi · GitHub

Intern is a JavaScript test stack... if you're already writing JavaScript map apps, this may be a good choice, too. I know most GIS people are familiar with Python, though. I've worked for an organization that employed Python/Selenium for automated QA - repurposing for load testing is another benefit of writing your test users:

How to perform load testing using Selenium WebDriver? - Stack Overflow

If you aren't familiar with web crawling/scraping/mining, the basic concept is that you would automate browser actions in your application, like clicking on buttons, submitting forms, navigating, etc. This would be done by writing a test user/script that would interface with your map and follow a predetermined test path.

You could write into the script logic to check whether a page loaded, the output was expected, etc., but with Selenium, you can spin-up multiple test users/scripts at the same time, so load can easily be tested on the server (maybe using Perfmon?).

Here's a tutorial on Selenium + Python:

http://engineering.aweber.com/getting-started-with-ui-automated-tests-using-selenium-python/

Unfortunately, you would need to code your test users - I am not familiar with any of the commercial products that don't require coding, though I know they are pricey.

BrandonKeinath1 · Answer

Hi Chris,

Do you have any examples of using Selenium and Python to test arcgis services?  I've done a fair amount in Python but would be completely new to Selenium.  We've also been looking into system test as a method to have our "non-programming" publishers be able to test services they publish.

Thanks,

Brandon

BrandonKeinath1 · Answer

Hi Owen,

We have been using the analyze functionality and I've learned a lot that way.  But now we're looking for ways to know when we've improved a service's performance.  If I get some good feedback outside of this post I'll try to bring it here as well.  I have a number of feelers out

Thanks,

Brandon