We are excited to announce that the LoadRunner product family supports a new protocol named Finance ISO. As the name suggests, this new protocol is designed to be used by the Finance industry to help them load test their ISO8583 solutions.

How does it work?

To support ISO8583 applications, we are using the jPOS Java framework. As this is an open source interface for financial transactions already used by the industry, anyone who is involved in business logic implementation in this domain can easily write LoadRunner test scripts in Java with the help of this library.

Here are a few important classes that can be used in LoadRunner solutions to write test scripts:

• LrJposChannel: it contains a BaseChannel and helps collect measurements
• LrISOMsg: it is used by LrJposChannel and has a safeguard against mixing ISO versions
• LrISOField: the field numbers in human-readable format for three ISO versions:
  • ISO87Fields: ISO 1987 fields
  • ISO93Fields: ISO 1993 fields
  • ISO03Fields: ISO 2003 fields

For the other classes and the full documentation, please consult our functional reference guide.

What is the workflow?

The workflow for the Finance ISO protocol is the same as that for any other LoadRunner load test: VuGen -> Controller -> Analysis

In VuGen, the test script can be written in Java using our wrapper of the jPOS library, and it can also be replayed to see how it runs. When the test script is ready, a Controller scenario can be created which runs the script with multiple virtual users for multiple iterations. Once the results are generated, they can be evaluated in Analysis.

What measurements are collected in Finance ISO protocol?

The main goal of load testing is to analyze our system to see how it performs under a certain demand. To analyze it, we need some measurements. Currently three types of data are collected and displayed in Analysis:

• Finance ISO Response Duration: the average time needed to receive response after sending a message
• Finance ISO Message Rate: the number of messages sent and received per second
• Finance ISO Throughput: the number of bytes sent and received per second

Summary

We are happy that we are able to expand our supported protocols portfolio with the addition of Finance ISO. As this is a new addition, we are looking for ways to improve it. If you have any improvement ideas, please let us know on the Idea Exchange or any other official communication channel.