Getting started with Jmeter - Installation

Apache Jmeter is a pure Java desktop application designed to load test client/server software (such as a web application). It may be used to test performance both on static and dynamic resources such as static files, Java Servlets, CGI scripts, Java objects, databases, FTP servers, and more. JMeter can be used to simulate a heavy load on a server, network or object to test its strength or to analyze overall performance under different load types.

The easiest way to begin using JMeter is to first download the latest production release and install it.

You may find the link over here http://jmeter.apache.org/download_jmeter.cgi

It requires JDK 5 or higher.

Download the intended versions it can be Binaries or Source. Unzip the files to any folder.The executable script for Apache JMeter is located in the bin directory.

The executable script for Windows platform is jmeter.bat for Linux systems it will be jmeter.sh

These scripts are used to start JMeter in GUI mode. Double click the jmeter.bat script to start the tool.

You should be able to see the GUI of Jmeter.

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Start using it!

Points to be taken in account while doing performance testing

Now a days every business has a face. Every business is represented by its website. Web based applications are becoming very critical to the business, if they have a very large client base or customer base which regularly access their site. In order to have a good experience to end users in timely manner , it has to be optimized.

For this to happen performance testing is done as part of non functional testing. We have some parameters for which we see the web site behavior.

1. Responsiveness – How responsive an application is to a client request we need to check. It is about when users do some click events on page or does some navigation etc, how quickly they get back the response, that needs to optimized if it is low on it
2. Throughput – In general it is number of units of work per unit of time. In case of web application it can be request/second or hits/second or for sales guys it can be calls/second or transactions/second etc.
3. Reliability – It is like if at any point of time if some user access some page, it should show up the desired page. It should not show errors etc.
4. Scalability – It may not be of that much importance but if you want to upgrade your system in order to make it handle some extra work in near future (though more resources will be added like extra memory, processors etc). It should be able to handle it without effecting the performance of web application or system

Above are some basic points that should be taken in account while going for performance testing.