Mercury Interactive and OAG get wireless travel database ready for prime time access

Mercury Interactive has helped OAG Mobile, a comprehensive travel information database published by OAG, to improve how it tested its electronic products, following the implementation of TestDirector, LoadRunner and WinRunner testing solutions. The implementation enabled OAG to simulate many test scenarios and concurrent users for new product offerings.

This investment in testing processes and automated tools has helped the company bring its mobile product offering to market with the confidence that it has a quality product that will meet customers` requirements.

Now, OAG Mobile is accessible via hand-held devices or cell phones that support the wireless application protocol (WAP) and run a WAP-enabled micro-browser. OAG Mobile provides access to more than 600 000 direct and connecting flights from over 800 airlines and offers users the ability to check flight schedules, flight status and seat availability.

Users will also be able to take advantage of the OAG E-Notification service. With E-Notification, users can either look up the current status of a flight, or schedule an update to be automatically sent to them via their mobile device, as well as to their e-mail address, as changes occur.

According to Tim Hill, director of OAG`s Electronic Product Development, in preparation for the launch of OAG Mobile, LoadRunner was used to emulate actual user traffic by running virtual micro-browser agents against the WAP-enabled gateway and Web server. This will help ensure that high numbers of OAG Mobile users won`t overload the system, and that performance will meet or exceed internal benchmarks.

"The rapid adoption of mobile Internet devices adds another challenge to the already complex problem of managing e-commerce applications," says Graeme Allcock, sales manager for Mercury Interactive South Africa.

"The OAG wireless travel database is a premier example of the type of application consumers will be accessing via wireless devices. These consumers will expect to receive the high levels of performance that LoadRunner can help deliver."

Performance management for wireless web applications

The rapid growth of the mobile Internet market exacerbates three key challenges in managing the delivery of reliable, scalable Web applications. These challenges include capacity planning as mobile devices bring more users to the Web, increased infrastructure complexity, and support for a wide range of devices and form factors.

Mercury Interactive`s performance management solutions support Web applications based on the wireless application protocol (WAP), and i-mode, the wireless protocol developed by NTT DoCoMo. Products and hosted e-services that will support these wireless protocols include LoadRunner and ActiveTest, for load testing, Topaz and ActiveWatch, for real-time performance monitoring, and WinRunner, for functional testing. The company`s Web-based test management product, TestDirector, can be used to plan, manage and execute the entire testing process.