How Can You Load Test WCF Services?
There are several techniques that have been created to load test WCF Services. These include commercial and open source tools like WCF Load Test available on CodePlex. I have seen several packages over the past few years to perform load testing on web pages and web services including the load testing tools built into Visual Studio. Some were easy to setup, others not so much. WCF Services are unique from a plain old web page because of message payloads, security requirements and multiple protocol support.
Testing services, any code for that matter, is crucial to having reliable software. Load testing helps you flesh out bugs that would not ordinarily surface in unit or integration tests. It is also important to load test services utilizing more real-world demand patterns, not just linear.
Tellago Studios, the software development part of Tellago (that’s who I work for 
) has recently released the SO-Aware Test Workbench which features an easy to configure and execute WCF Service Load Testing tool. The Test Workbench is a tool included with SO-Aware our service governance package.
Last month Jesus Rodriguez was featured on EndPoint TV with Ron Jacobs to demonstrate the testing features and benefits SO-Aware and the Test Workbench offer to WCF developers, architects and testers. I encourage you take time to watch Jesus demonstrate the tools.
As a Front-End/UX developer working against services I am coming to appreciate more and more the complexities doing quality WCF requires. Having a good, reliable and easy to configure service testing environment is crucial to producing the reliable service layers I consume with my jQuery AJAX calls and native mobile clients. Personally I want to spend as little time as I can on this task. The SO-Aware Test Workbench really makes defining tests much simpler.
You can read more information about the SO-Aware Test Workbench on the Tellago Studios web site. You can also download a FREE express version of the tool. The express version of the Test Workbench is a fully functional tool, but limits the number of services to five.