Our tests are performed on a web application using three web pages to display three different Crystal Reports. Those reports are based on the Adventureworks database. Each page displays the report using the standard Crystal Viewer object with the report bound to that object on an asp.net page.

Our test strategy involves two sets of tests. The first load test consists of standard or non cached reports. The second load test consists of those tests using the Crystal reports caching with the same reports. 

As a reminder, the Visual Studio load testing application is used. The strategy is to create two web tests that view the three different reports we have created. These different tests should cycle through the reports pages in a semi random manner, at some point go to the last page, and first page in at least one instance. Also, the tests include using the Crystal Viewer goto page function to maneuver to specific pages.

First, we run first "non-cached" load test. Those results are used as the benchmark. Then the second load test uses two web tests with the same reports and the same maneuver sequence.  The only difference is the use of the cached reports rather than the standard report.

The reports use the SQL Server sample database Adventureworks to pull sales data from. The web tests use all three reports. The first test shows sales by customer order. The next test includes all the reports, including Sales Person report, the customers report, and the Sales Orders report. The Sales Person and customers' reports have a lot of pages, over 1,000 each, and the Sales Person report is a summary that does not display much more than one page. 

The load tests are set up with the idea that the users of these reports have a mix of internal LAN connections and a mix of DSL type connections. The browser mix will be kept to minimum, just one flavor of IE (7.0) and Firefox. More details can be found later.