Get it right before you go online

Organisations facing time-to-market pressures in the race to go online need to sustain both quality and performance - before their web applications go live.

According to research house International Data Corporation (IDC): "nearly 75 percent of companies conducting business on the web with revenues in excess of $200 million have suffered web site failure within the past six months, mainly due to software bugs and complications relating to software upgrades."

"This startling statistic drives home a solid point: e-businesses need to get it right before they go online," says Grant Kirk, a Compuware SA account manager. "When you`re talking about integrating the Internet into your business, failure is not only public, it`s very costly."

More and more companies and their customers are heading for the web to conduct business. Once there, e-businesses must make certain their web applications enable customers to find what they want, and when they want, or these customers will go elsewhere.

To stay ahead, dot-com companies must be reliable and their applications stable. Problem pages, slow response times, transaction errors or absolute web site failures cause customers to click over to the competition.

Although industry analysts agree there is no 100-percent guarantee against performance errors, they contend testing throughout the web application`s life cycle helps e-businesses stay on track.

"The key to performance stability and quality involves testing in all four directions - integrity, reliability and scalability testing, and performance monitoring - through the entire life cycle," says Kirk. "Partial testing is like not testing at all, and it can leave e-businesses stranded.

"The simple reason is quality testing and performance monitoring check uniquely different aspects of a web site," he says.

Few companies have the resources, time, budget and expertise to test in all four directions. Compuware has addressed this need by launching PointForward, its remote testing service, which provides testing in all these areas, with results accessible to clients online.

"Companies must ensure a high quality, high performance experience for their site visitors," says Kirk. "Managing these high expectations requires quantitative, business-driven information - available immediately and from any point in the world. PointForward helps ensure web site quality and performance, without requiring a major investment in hardware or testing resources."

Compuware has an array of tools to enable complete testing in all four critical testing areas: reliability, scalability, integrity and ongoing performance. Compuware`s NuMega DevPartner Web Script Edition is one tool which can save time and effort right at the start of the web application` life cycle.

"Active Server Page (ASP) developers typically spend 25-50 percent of their development time testing and debugging their work, relying heavily on trial-and-error techniques to ensure their scripts are reliable and well tuned," says Kirk. "This practice can lead to delivery delays or unreliable, slow web sites."

Compuware`s NuMega DevPartner Web Script Edition accelerates the development of ASP and Html by helping web developers ensure their scripts are reliable and free of performance problems.

Kirk says this is the only suite of software development tools that saves testing and debugging time by helping web developers improve the reliability and efficiency of their dynamic web pages. It includes performance profiling, script test coverage, and distributed analysis features that developers can use to analyse the VBScript and JavaScrip/ Jscript in their ASP or Html files.