Author: Chaitanya M Bhatt

Basically when programmers goes for .NET/VB/Java applet driven
development – most oftenly the application would not use open
standards like HTTP and hence loadrunner protocols would fail to
capture any of the messages sent through the application layer.

Developers would generally use custom messaging formats when they
develop an application using .NET/VB/Java applets, so this means when
the client and server are speaking with each other none of the
loadrunner protocols can identify the message because it hasn’t been
predefined.

Solution: Since contemporary record-replay option is ruled you can use
decompilers to make those DLL’s of your application more readable and
you should also consider getting help from the developers to build
workflow scripts using the source code of the application itself
in .NET Vu or VB Vu. This task could be challenging if the developers
have shrouded/obfuscated the code intentionally for security purpose,
hence i strongly suggest you get developer’s support during script
preperation
.
This tool can come in handly if your application :http://
www.remotesoft.com/salamander/

Worst case if nothing works, for the benifit of time you may choose
the following approach only if your workload scenario is light weight
with 10-50 virtual users, you may use RDP(analog recording) protocol
which records inputs of Keyboards and Mouse Clicks. You may need
higher end loadgenerator hardware if your targetting a higher range of
virtual user.

You can also try Winsock protocol. You may be lucky if your
application buffer passing through the sockets is small in size and
probably in which case your winsock script might be more readable and
may relatively be more feasible than any of the above mentioned methods
(again…it is subjective).