Hi,

At February 9, 2004, 05:53, Werner F. Bruhin wrote:

> On a POS (for a Restaurant) any/all transactions should be sub second,
> regardless of network - we had this on networks way slower then LAN.

True. I was probably thinking about our application which isn't a
POS, when I wrote this. But, I did see POS systems having a 2 second
response time over slow connections, the server was probably a
mainframe with 500 or more clients.

> By transaction I mean an order of e.g. a steak, a coke, etc, only
> exception is probably the payment transaction if a credit card or a
> room charge is involved as the authorization will take longer there.

Definitely, placing a steak order should be quick and I don't see any
reason why it would take more than half a second to submit the
request/update. And, for sure when it comes to credit/debit card
payments, your at the mercy of the credit/debit card
network/processing speed, this all depends on how busy that system is.

> Obviously all the timing should be measured on the client station,
> even if it is done by human beings (it is easy to see if you have sub
> second or seconds response time). If you have a tool to emulate the
> user on a client even better, especially if you find that the response
> time is NOT sub second and you need to change things and check it
> again and again.

There are GUI testing applications that could help you here. Or, you
can use profilers that could give at least most of the response time
by the code and even help in finding bottlenecks. And, depending on
the testing suite, some do come with a load stress testing tool.

I don't know what you are using to develop your application, but I'm
sure there are tools that would fit your needs. And, who knows some
might not be expensive to buy.

Here are 2 websites(if you haven't seen them yet) that have some
resources related to quality assurance, that you might find useful:
http://www.sqatester.com/index.htm
http://www.softwareqatest.com/index.html

--
Best regards,
Daniel Rail
Senior System Engineer
ACCRA Group Inc. (www.accra.ca)
ACCRA Med Software Inc. (www.filopto.com)