Yes, and the ability to use GUI Virtual users has been there since the very first version of LoadRunner. Furthermore, the move to API level virtual users allowed more users to run on a given piece of hardware and more carefully examine the issue of server scalability by removing the already qualified front end (it works for one!) before answering the question of how it works for many. It has always been recommended to consider deploying a handful of GUI virtual users where a thick client has come into play to better understand the weight added by the client over and above the level of the server side communication, such as in examining the delta in times between Login and Login_GUI (which would be in a GUI Viretual User running QuickTest Professional on a single operating system instance) In general, you do not convert. The UFT scripts are recorded at the topmost layer of the OSI stack, at the end user interface. The majority of the LoadRunner virtual user are at a lower layer of the API stack. You might consider starting VUGEN in record mode and then playing back your QTP Script if you have a single script which precisely matches the business process under examination under load from beginning to end. IN most cases such test scripts are not available and you simply walk through the business process and record it again as a starting point. If you record at a lower layer of the OSI, then the scripts are far simpler as you have no issues of object identification you have to deal with, only the flows of requests and responses from client to server and returned. Or, you have sort of a 99th percentile hybrid in terms of TruClient, but without the overhead of the functional items that are not required for performance testing.
