Background

As the UK’s leading DIY and garden centre retailer, B&Q employs some 30,000 people and runs

320+ stores in the UK, plus another 50 from Poland to Shanghai. Parent company Kingfisher plc

recently acquired top French DIY chain Castorama, to become the largest DIY group in Europe.

B&Q has become a £6 billion business. But it doesn’t end there, as there are joint ventures in

China, Taiwan and Turkey, which are being used successfully to test the global markets.

As well as running its stores network, B&Q also runs a successful website operation,

www.diy.com, with 24x7 access to products, ideas, expert advice and “how to” guides.

Throughout the company, there is a practical, pragmatic and positive atmosphere – a “can do”

approach, which permeates everything the company does.

To reflect its ambitions, late in 2003, B&Q had set about upgrading its website alongside a new

and improved infrastructure.

The suggestion was that our problem could be well solved through use of the LoadRunner load and stress testing tool. We were put in touch with one of the company’s Preferred Partners, StarBase Computer Services Ltd.  

– Matt Louth, B&Q

The problem

B&Q was in the process of upgrading its website with a new release of the ATG Dynamo 5.6.1

web application server, replacing the existing 4.5.1 release, to provide extra and improved

functionality. When the company attempted to go live on 4 December, all work had to be

abandoned due to problems with a memory leak on the application servers. B&Q Systems

Manager Matt Louth said, “There was a failed implementation. Our team identified that

the load testing capability was not effectively giving the required confirmation to go forward for

implementation. Some of our existing software was not up to the job. We looked around the

market for potential solutions. There was already a proven relationship between Mercury

Interactive and our headquarters.”

“The suggestion was that our problem could be well solved through use of the LoadRunner load

and stress testing tool,” said Louth. “We were put in touch with one of the company’s Preferred

Partners, StarBase Computer Services Ltd, who were briefed a few days before Christmas, and

then worked with us in January.”

The solution

For this project, StarBase used the Mercury Interactive LoadRunner v7.8 load testing tool.

StarBase started onsite on 7 January and identified the business processes that needed

scripting and testing – including processes like creating new customers, ordering, etc.   In all 14

scripts were developed by StarBase, with 25 man days spent scripting, for a scenario of a

maximum 700 virtual users.

Although the problems seen on 4 December could not be reproduced using LoadRunner, a

workaround was developed by running crawler software on the B&Q website.   This proved that

patches developed by the application provider had fixed the problem.

The key points about StarBase were its approach, the people onsite were of the highest quality, and they worked closely with our team.  

– Matt Louth, B&Q

Once this problem was resolved, StarBase used LoadRunner to identify a ‘first order’ issue, a

serious performance problem caused by the first order to reach the application server taking an

inordinate amount of time to complete, monopolising the processor until it had completed.   This

caused increase response times for all transactions during this period.

In all, 10 man days were spent on testing. The site performed well after the application developer

patches had been applied and the recommended ATG configuration changes had been made.

The load was ramped up beyond what the current network infrastructure would allow – restricted

to a 40MB pipe to B&Q’s Internet Service Provider – without any of the application architecture

failing. The site supported three times the current peak load and retained respectable response

times.

“The solution was very professional and had an efficient output throughout the whole of this high

profile project,” said Louth.

“The key points I would make about StarBase’s work are that the company’s thorough approach

was exemplary, and the people on site were of the highest quality, and worked closely with our

team.”

“They integrated with the team and understood the problem from our perspective, rather than

imposing their views,” said Louth. “That approach is very refreshing.”