Test Execute load time

[wmtan01]

Hi,

We're trying to use Test Execute to run some smoke tests everytime a new build is available from developers to make sure some functionality are still working. The problem is, we are experiencing a huge overhead when starting the Test Execute application. We also noticed the same thing with Test Complete where it takes about 5 mins to open up our project.

I just want to understand what's causing this large load time overhead. Is it the number of keyword tests? or the number of scripts? or the size of our name mapping? 

Thanks for anyone who can shed light to this mystery

[tristaanogre]

How many keyword tests do you have?  I have, in my project, something like 300-400 and it loads within a minute (less, usually).  So, this tells me something is happening on load.  Have you tried reducing the number of logs stored in the project?

[wmtan01]

We have about 1300 keyword tests. I did try the clearing the logs and it didnt reduce the loading time much. 

So I currently have some theories on why its slow:

the massive amount of KWTs

the massive amount of Scripts that we have

the large namemapping

the way we structured organization of the KWTs and the Scripts (we try to separate them into folders)

[tristaanogre]

Are you using the visualizer or the NameMapping image capture?  It could be, also, that these are bogging down the load as well.  You could try clearing these out.

[AlexKaras]

Hi,

Another possible option is if your test project is located remotely somewhere on the network shared drive.

[wmtan01]

We don't save images in the Namemapping but I did see that we have folders under Visualizer in the KeywordTests folder. Can I delete those things? or do they get used during test execution.

@AlexKaras we have all the files locally so i don't think that's a problem.

I made a script to clean up the KWTs only retain those necessary for smoke tests and did see a drastic improvement with the load time. I'm guessing the sheer number of KWTs might really be the cause.

[TanyaGorbunova]

Hi @wmtan01,

Could you please refer to the Enhancing TestComplete Performance article. It shares best practices to set up TestComplete projects.

Does it help?

[wmtan01 · Accepted solution]

We did try the suggestions there but it decreased runtime not the load time. For now we've decided to make a minimized version of the KeywordTests file so non essential KWTs (those not being used by non developers) would no longer need to be loaded.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions!

[TanyaGorbunova]

Thanks for sharing your solution with us, @wmtan01!