To create a data set with external data, click the Import button (a). In the Import Dataset window, select the data source on the left (b). Either Excel, CSV/Text file, or SQL Server query. Fill out the corresponding form to import a dataset. Click the Preview button (c) to see a preview of the dataset. When you are ready to import the dataset, give it a unique name, select default Default databinding, and click the Import button (d).



Excel:

  1. Browse for or provide a path to the Excel file.
  2. Click Refresh button to refresh the worksheets in the Excel workbook.
  3. Check the First line has column headings if the first row contains column headings.
  4. Select the default Default databinding.


If you have x64 version of Microsoft Excel on your machine and getting the following error: 'Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0' provider is not registered on the local machine; then you may need to install Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable from here.

If you have a 64-bit version of Windows and a 32-bit version of Microsoft Excel, importing from Excel will not work. As a workaround, you can save the Excel file as .csv and import it as CSV/text file as described below.



CSV/Text file

  1. Browse for or provide a path to the CSV/text file.
  2. Type the delimiter character that will separate the columns. For instance, if the text file is a .csv, then the ',' should be the delimiter.
  3. Check the First line has column headings if the first row contains column headings. 
  4. Select the default Default databinding.


Special Characters

  • Special characters can be included in the dataset CSV/text file using URL encoding. To insert a character with hexadecimal code XX, add the %XX sequence to the file. In rare cases, when %XX should be interpreted as a 3-character string, URL-encode the percent character, so the string will look like %25XX
  • The comma character is used as a field separator in the text file. To use a coma within values, surround it with quotes (ex. ",")



SQL Server

  1. Fill out the SQL Server form. Provide the Server Name, Database Name, Credentials, and a Select Query.


Synchronizing with the data source

When importing a dataset, the data is loaded only at the time of import. By default, a dataset is not synchronized with the source before running a test. The Auto-sync Dataset property controls the dataset synchronization behavior:

  • Never: Don't synchronize the dataset with the data source
  • Try: Attempt to synchronize the dataset with the data source.
  • Always: Attempt to synchronize the dataset with the data source. If failed, then don't start the test.


Manual Synchronization

To manually synchronize the dataset, click the Update button on the toolbar.

Command line support

Starting from v5.4, StresStimulus supports auto-synching when starting the test from the command line.

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