How to set Session Keywords or Terminal Keywords?
Two types of keywords might be involved in an experiment: Session Keywords and Terminal Keywords.
Session Keywords are transaction parameters whose value must remain the same within one transaction session on a terminal. Imagine a Student Registration System with 3 terminals running concurrently; in front of each terminal there are several students waiting on line, thus when each of these students gets his turn to execute a number of transactions, the student is conducting one transaction session. During one such transaction session ( for example, between Login and Logout ), the student's user ID and password must represent the same person and their values must remain the same, hence Student ID and Password may be considered as Session Keywords.
Terminal Keywords are transaction parameters whose value must not appear on different terminals at the same moment during the experiment. For example, the registrar of a school who monitors the Student Registration System may disallow any student to logon to more than one terminal at the same time. Thus, in such system, no two terminals may encounter the same Student ID and Student Password arguments simultaneously. Therefore, Student ID and Password may be defined as Terminal keywords.
In theory, a transaction parameter could be a Session Keyword, a Terminal Keywords, neither, or both. In the example described above, Student ID and Password are both Session Keywords and Terminal Keywords. However, if the registrar does allow a student to use more than one terminal at the same time, then these two parameters may be just Session Keywords, but not Terminal Keywords. If for some reason the registrar does not allow students to register for the same course on different terminals at the same time, then the Course Number may be a Terminal Keyword, not a Session Keyword, but this is very rare.
Transaction Processing Performance Tool allows users to specify any Session Keywords or Terminal Keywords that are needed for an experiment in the Transaction Prototypes File. For detailed information on how to set up these keywords, click here.
