Author:Chaitanya Bhatt
Email:chaitanya.bhatt@performancecompetence.com

Recently a newbie to Loadrunner asked me the following question: “I have seen you somewhere in the loadrunner groups. I like to know if you
are aware of some sites where we can have a look at with different protocols
that uses.

For example, I like to see that the applications that uses different
protocol.

Web services
Oracle NCA ,
SAP GUI
DB

Can we use any of the client S/W like, SQL query analyzer, SQL developer,
TOAD any of such tools to connet to DB and work on DB protocol with LR?
I have good knowledge & experience on Load Runner with Web protocol.

But Like to know more about other protocols.”

My Answer to the above question in a general sense:
Let me tell one thing frankly. According to me LoadRunner is a small tool but the technologies it supports is very vast. I haven’t come across any website which is comprehensive enough to help people deal with rarely used protocols like Oracle 2 tier or Tuxedo for instance. When people asked me whether it is possible to directly connect to the database and work on it – using Toad or SQL query – they put a smile on my face. People, you can connect to the database for sure using ODBC protocol, Oracle 2 tier protocol but you surely need not have any SQL query analyzer or Toad to do that. Vugen alone is sufficient.

If you are looking forward to really learn the different protocols of Loadrunner then start learning the technologies up front on which these protocol works. Example if it is SAP GUI, start googling information on SAP GUI and keep you basic understanding of SAP GUI good enough so that if you challenged to work on it tomorrow – you would at least have fair amount of idea of where to start with.

Most of the LR professionals I would say are self thought. You need to have the aptitude and drive to perform R&D on something you feel is challenging you. In this particular case I would suggest you install Oracle DB on your machine and try connecting to the Db using ODBC protocol of LR and once you establish connection – write queries to fetch and insert data. You would love the way you learnt new things by this method. Believe me, it is a tried and tested method of learning Loadrunner. It just works.