WebMark 2004 is an Internet technology based benchmark that accurately reflects usage patterns for business users in two Internet usage categories - Information Processing and Commercial Transactions.
Each category represents the workload of a simulated user accomplishing a set of common tasks.
Information Processing
Information Processing is composed of activities focused on users viewing, researching and managing information on the Internet. Three websites - Portal, Research and Training are created to represent common Internet sites and activities that fall in this scenario.
Portal: Represents intranet portals that offer company news, organizational updates and serve as a one-stop shop for employee services and intranet applications.
Research: Represents activities that companies perform as they research customer issues or claims.
Training: Represents those activities involved in the delivery of rich media content and data visualization for online training classes.
Commercial Transactions
Commercial Transactions is composed of activities involved in the commercial exchange of goods or services. Three websites - Purchasing, Finance and Marketplace are created to represent common Internet sites and activities that fall in this scenario.
Purchasing: Represents activities involved in the purchasing of goods or service from an online retailer or merchant.
Finance: Represents activities provided by financial institutions for delivering trading services or financial information utilities such as stock quotes.
Marketplace: Represents activities provided by an online marketplace that offers interactive tools to assist buyers and sellers in making purchasing decisions.
Other Key WebMark 2004 features include the following:
- Popular plug-ins and technologies: WebMark utilizes the leading web plug-ins and technologies such as: Adobe® Acrobat® Reader® v6.0, Macromedia® Flash Player V7.0.14.0, Microsoft® Windows Media Player® 9 series, Macromedia® Shockwave Player v 8.5.1, DHTML, JavaScript, Java Applets (SUN JRE 1.4.1), W3C SSL, XML and .NET® Framework v1.1
- Ease of use: WebMark 2004 represents a significant advance in ease of use for the testing of Internet client environments.
- Offline and online modes: Featuring two modes of operation, official scores can be reported in either on-line and offline mode. Offline mode enables users to discover the Internet client performance of their PC using content stored locally. On-line mode requires an additional server to host test content but further empowers users to measure additional technologies such as SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and web services.
- Full Support for Windows XP: WebMark 2004 has been tested on English versions of Windows XP (Home and Professional) and eight non-English operating systems (Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish).
- New and upgraded websites: WebMark 2004 includes new websites that reflect emerging business user trends.
- Command line operation: It is possible to run WebMark 2004 without using the graphical user interface. See the CD-ROM support documentation for details.
- Improved installation: One-click installation is provided on Windows XP.
- Trial run: The trial run can be used to test the benchmark on a system before scores are generated. On Windows XP, the ProcessIdleTask API is called after the trial run in order to optimize Windows XP performance. It is recommended to run the trial run before generating an official score on Windows XP.
- Automated error reporting: It is now possible to report errors using a one-click error-reporting feature. All information pertaining to the error is captured to help BAPCo provide timely technical support.