User Tools

Site Tools


Test and Analyse


Testing an EASAP

Once an Author has an EASAP working, the next step in the development cycle is to test it. Three tools Test, Watch and Profile are available to the Author from the EASA web pages at:

  • EASA→Author→Authoring→Testing

The Test EASAP link which can also be found within the Builder from the Open Web Browser Test icon or via the menus at Application→Test in Web Browser runs the EASAP and and saves:

  • the Output document (EASA→User→Results once published)
  • Output files
  • the NOTES
  • the current date
  • the EASAP interface in the state it's in following the test run
  • the state of all the EASAP objects

Examine the EASAP's correctness by varying inputs and submitting multiple runs. Following each test run the above data is stored as a row on the EASA→Author→Authoring→Testing page.


Analysing an EASAP

More fine-grained data on the running EASAP is available at EASA→Author→Authoring→Testing under the Analyse EASAP link. The Author may dynamically 'watch' the data within an EASAP's objects, as well as dynamically 'profile' the EVENT's/ACTION GROUP's within an EASAP.


Watch

Any SCALAR, LIST, EXPLICIT or CONSTANT object can be added to the 'Watch' list. Click 'refresh' after making changes to the EASAP interface above the Analyse window to see the state changes.

JSF Dependents: immediately updated objects in the user interface after entry of new data.
CCL Dependents: data objects that will be updated depending on various other factors.

Clicking on an object's 'dependents' helps an Author follow errors as they propagate. 'Forward' and 'Backward' links allow the Author the ability to traverse the dependency tree for a particular object, below.


Profile

ACTION's often involve I/O such as DATABASE ACTION, EXPORT TO PDF, the various EXCEL ACTION's, and EMAIL ACTION. These I/O ACTIONS are blocking in that the EASAP waits, doing nothing until the I/O process has completed. The profile tab shows after every refresh-icon click:

  • The particular kind of ACTION
  • the cumulative time (in ms) an EASAP has spent in its various ACTION GROUP's
  • a counter showing the number of times the ACTION has triggered
  • the fraction of the total ACTION GROUP time that is spent completing each Child ACTION

Profile gives the Author a powerful insight into the operational behavior of an EASAP. A detailed performance profile is an important window into why an EASAP is running slow. Additionally, profile includes ACTION's that don't involve I/O but might have lengthy local-computation, or stalled-processing due to user interface ACTION's that may need reexamination.

Below is an example of running a profile on the Stock Screener tutorial. One DATABASE ACTION runs a single time when a User opens the EASAP, another is run every time a User pushes the 'Search Stock Data', in this case it has been pushed fourteen times for a total of 3777ms.