I am curious what (if any) the max number of steps is per transaction? I have to assume that there was some testing done around this by SolarWinds and I would like to know where those boundaries are.
Thanks in advance for any help with this!
The "step" can be quite vague term. Some steps can contain one or two actions while others can contain tens of them. There is really no limit determined by a number of steps or actions. Transaction is just processing steps and actions one by one so even if there are hundreds of actions it just takes more time to run them all.
But there is a theoretical limit based on memory that particular transaction occupies. When transactions are passed around in WPM they are serialized in memory. If there is so many actions that total size in memory exceeds certain value (which depends on environment, current WPM process state etc., but is in tens or even hundreds MB) then there can be a problem. But each action size in memory is different, it also depends on the web element that the action was made for etc. So we really can't give you any number because it would be in a range such as 10-1000 actions per transaction.
BTW: Files for upload are also part of transaction. If you get a file that has for example 2GB in size and try to record transaction that uploads this file somewhere then WPM will not be able to handle it for sure. And it can be transaction with one step and two actions - navigate + upload.
Hi,
As far as I know there are no limits of steps per transaction. What is your usecase/issue ?
Petr
It's not so much a use case as it is planning. We are an MSP and we will be offering Web Transaction Monitoring as a service to our clients (at least that's the working plan) and as we structure the service I was trying to determine how many steps per transaction we should limit the service to for our clients. My experience is that if we don't put a limit on it somebody will come along and find a way to have way too many and break the system.
I know typically as part of software development these types of limits are tested in the lab before a product is release so I was hoping that SolarWinds would have these numbers, even if they were not hard limits but just limits where you may begin to experience problems.
Let me know if that makes sense.
Thanks jiri.tomek!
But there is a theoretical limit based on memory that particular transaction occupies. When transactions are passed around in WPM they are serialized in memory. If there is so many actions that total size in memory exceeds certain value (which depends on environment, current WPM process state etc., but is in tens or even hundreds MB) then there can be a problem. But each action size in memory is different, it also depends on the web element that the action was made for etc. So we really can't give you any number because it would be in a range such as 10-1000 actions per transaction.BTW: Files for upload are also part of transaction. If you get a file that has for example 2GB in size and try to record transaction that uploads this file somewhere then WPM will not be able to handle it for sure. And it can be transaction with one step and two actions - navigate + upload.
jiri.tomek my engineering lead would like as much detail as you can provide on this. Do you guys have specific QA test results that you could share?
Again, I ask because we are planning to build out services with this and need to fully understand how and where we might run into problems so we know how to scope the service. For example; should we limit clients to only a specific number of steps per transaction or some other limit to avoid running into capacity or other problems.
If/when we move forward with this we will be getting the Unlimited licensing so this will be a significant investment and my management is not going to be happy if we end up running into a lot of problems we didn't anticipate.
Let me know what you can share and if you have any thoughts or suggestions also; thanks!
