Introduction: Load and Performance Testing Using Apache JMeter
Performance, reliability, and usability of your software application are very crucial factors in today's fast-paced, competitive digital world. It is crucial to check how your application performs during both regular and peak usage since users expect a smooth and reliable experience when visiting and navigating your website. This is the place where load and performance testing using Apache JMeter comes into play.
Using JMeter for testing, testers, and developers can identify performance-related potential bottlenecks that cause the issue. Whether you’re conducting Apache JMeter load testing to evaluate server stability or JMeter performance testing to measure response times, JMeter software provides a complete understanding of your application’s behavior under different conditions, as it can simulate real-world traffic, making it an invaluable tool for developers and testers.
What is Apache JMeter software?
Apache JMeter is a powerful and widely used open-source tool that is designed by the Apache Software Foundation to perform load and performance testing of software applications. It has a wide variety of robust features and a user-friendly interface that helps developers analyze the performance and scalability of web applications, APIs (application programming interfaces), databases, and many more.
JMeter for testing allows you to simulate heavy loads on a server, group of servers, or network to assess the performance of an application under different traffic conditions. You can analyze server behavior and performance under different states of load conditions.
Key Features and Benefits of Apache JMeter in Software Testing
Here is the list of key features of Apache JMeter software:
- Protocol Support: Apache JMeter supports a variety of protocols for testing as below.
- Web: Protocols to test HTTP and HTTPS requests.
- SOAP/REST: Protocol to test web services.
- FTP: Network protocol
- JDBC: Java API to connect and execute queries in a database.
- LDAP: Lightweight Directory Access Protocol.
- Message-oriented middleware (MOM) via JMS API.
- Mail: SMTP, POP3, and IMAP protocols.
- TCP: Transmission Control Protocol
- Java Objects
- Scalability: You can perform stress testing using It by simulating thousands of users to measure the performance of the application and how it can handle growth.
- Extensibility: It supports a wide variety of plugins, like custom thread groups, throughput shaping timers, PerfMon servers, performance monitoring, etc., to enhance the capability of JMeter software to meet specific testing needs.
- User-Friendly Interface: It provides a graphical user-friendly interface to perform load and performance testing.
- Record & Playback: You can record your browser activities in it. Also, you can play back those navigations in your JMeter load testing plan.
- Distributed testing: You can distribute a virtual user's load on different systems using the master-slave architecture that is provided by JMeter.
- Reporting: You can generate different kinds of graphical reports in the form of graphs, charts, tables, and HTML in the JMeter performance testing tool to identify bottlenecks and optimize performance.
- Assertions: You can compare and validate expected and actual responses of the server using assertions in JMeter. Response Assertion, Duration Assertion, BeanShell Assertion, and Size Assertion are a few examples of assertions in Apache JMeter.
- CI/CD Integration: It can be integrated with CI/CD tools like Jenkins, GitLab, and many more to streamline performance testing and ensure higher software quality.
- Platform independent: It can run on different platforms and OS as it is a pure 100% Java-based application.
- Community support: Apache JMeter has vast online community support to find any solution and support.
All these are the key features of jmeter in software testing. These versatile and easy-to-use features of the Apache JMeter load testing tool make JMeter popular in the software testing industry.
Load And Performance Testing Using Apache JMeter
Before learning about Apache JMeter load testing and JMeter performance testing, You must know the difference between load and performance testing in software testing.
Difference Between Load and Performance Testing
What is Performance Testing?
Performance testing is a practice that evaluates a system's responsiveness and stability under specific workload conditions. It evaluates the overall efficiency and responsiveness of a system under varying conditions.
Example: Giving your car a complete checkup - checking everything from acceleration and handling to fuel efficiency.
What is Apache JMeter Performance Testing?
It examines the system's speed, stability, and responsiveness under various conditions, including normal and stress scenarios, to ensure optimal performance.
The Goal of JMeter Performance Testing
- Measure response times and throughput for critical transactions.
- Identify system stability under prolonged usage.
- Detect performance issues like latency, memory leaks, or crashes.
What is Load Testing?
Load testing involves simulating multiple users accessing a software program simultaneously to evaluate its performance. Load testing focuses on assessing how an application performs under varying levels of user traffic and increasing loads.
Example: Test how your car handles behaves when it's fully loaded with passengers and cargo.
What is Apache JMeter Load Testing?
It focuses on evaluating how a system behaves under concurrent expected or high user load to identify its capacity and scalability.
The Goal of JMeter Load Testing
- Identify the maximum number of users the system can handle without performance degradation.
- Evaluate the application’s response time under normal and peak loads.
- Detect bottlenecks that might arise due to high user activity.
Example of Load Testing: You have a JMeter load test scenario for an e-commerce site to simulate users performing different actions like registration, login, product addition to basket, and checkout. JMeter can simulate users performing different actions and provides you a matrix to analyze application load capacity and based on that you can improve it.
Different Types of Performance Testing in Software Testing
You can use JMeter to perform different types of performance testing. Let us see what types of performance testing we can do using JMeter.
Load Testing: Already discussed above.
Volume Testing:
The main objective of volume testing in software testing is to check how well a software application works when dealing with a large amount of data. This testing helps to see how the application behaves when there is a lot of data stored in its database. It also helps find problems like system failures, slowdowns, or inefficiencies caused by handling too much data in a database or file system.
Example of Volume Testing:
Online ticket booking systems or banking systems process millions of transactions every hour. You can simulate these transaction datasets to analyze the system's performance in processing a large volume of data. You can use automation tools like JMeter to perform volume testing.
Stress Testing:
The main goal of stress testing in software testing is to observe the system's behavior in extreme workload conditions with limited resources. You can identify the system's workload limitations and breaking or weak points when sudden spikes in user traffic, low memory or CPU, or large data processing in a short time.
Example of Stress Testing
You can consider Netflix's global event scenario where lakhs of users start watching online streaming suddenly. You can use this scenario to simulate a sudden spike in users and observe how much stress the system can handle. You can use automation tools like Apache JMeter or LoadRunner to perform stress testing.
Scalability Testing:
Software scalability testing determines whether the system can scale up automatically when a user's traffic or transactions increase without compromising performance or stability. It identifies resource limits and performance bottlenecks and you can plan capacity additions accordingly
Example of Scalability Testing:
E-commerce sites get a large volume of users and transactions during the festival season like the Black Friday sale. You can simulate this scenario using automation tools like Apache JMeter to perform scalability testing. You can gradually increase the user base to determine the system's scalability and performance.
Spike Testing:
Spike testing in software testing is a type of performance testing to analyze a system's performance on the sudden spike of users and how well it can recover once the spike is reduced. It can identify the system's weakness during sudden workload changes.
Example of Spike Testing:
Online ticket booking system when tickets for a football or cricket go on sale before the World Cup. You can simulate this scenario to perform spike testing using automation tools like LoadRunner or Apache JMeter.
Soak Testing:
Soak testing in software testing is known as Endurance Testing used to determine a system's performance under a sustained load over an extended period. It identifies the system's stability under normal or peak load conditions over long periods.
Example of Soak Testing:
You can consider a banking system scenario to simulate steady user transactions over a week using performance testing tools like Apache JMeter or LoadRunner.
Perform Load And Performance Testing in Apache JMeter
To perform Apache JMeter load testing, First of all, you need to check which Java version is installed on your system. It should be Java 8+.
Step 1. Check Java Version in Windows
Type "java -version" in the command prompt.
Install or update the Java version if you do not have Java 8+ in your system.
Step 2. Download Apache JMeter Software
To use it for testing, download the latest version of Apache JMeter software. Here is a step-by-step guide to downloading and installing jmeter.
- To download JMeter, Open JMeter Download Link
- Download the Zip file from the Binaries section and save it in your local drive.
- Extract the downloaded JMeter folder.
Step 3. Initiate JMeter For Testing
- Open the bin folder. You will find it inside the extracted folder.
- Double-click on the "jmeter.bat" file. It will initiate the it's interface.
- Hold on. It can take some time to initiate the interface.
Step 4: Create First Load Testing Plan in Apache JMeter
Now you are all set to create the first JMeter load or performance testing plan. We will create a sample test plan by adding different essential components. Here is a step-by-step guide to creating a sample test plan in Apache JMeter.
Create a New Test Plan
- In the interface, Navigate and click File -> New.
- Rename the test plan to "Sample Test" and click on the save button to save it at your desired location in local drives.
Add Thread Group in Apache JMeter Test Plan
What is Thread Group in JMeter?
It is group control in Apache JMeter. You can specify how many number of threads you want to use to execute your Apache JMeter load test. Also, you can set the Ramp-up period and loop count in a thread group.
- Right-click on JMeter "Sample Test" plan and click on Add -> Threads (Users) -> Thread Group.
- It will add a thread group under the sample test plan.
Configure Thread Group Elements
- You need to configure the thread group to run the test with concurrent users.
- Select Thread Group from the tree and set
- Number of Threads (users) = 5
- Ramp-up period (seconds) = 5
- Loop Count = 1
- This configuration will load 5 concurrent users in 5 seconds when you run the test.
- Save the test plan.
Add HTTP Request in Apache JMeter Performance Testing Plan
What is HTTP Request in Apache JMeter?
HTTP Request is a sampler in Apache JMeter. It can send HTTP or HTTPS requests to the server.
- Right-click on Thread Group and select Add -> Sampler -> HTTP Request.
- It will add an HTTP Request under Thread Group.
Configure HTTP Request Elements
- Select HTTP Request from the tree and set
- Name = Home Page
- Server Name or IP = Paste your website to test URL without HTTP/HTTPS
- Example: If your site URL is https://www.yoursitename.com/ then use only www.yoursitename.com
- Path = /
- Save the test plan.
You can add multiple requests as well under the thread group to execute all of them simultaneously.
Add Listeners in Apache JMeter Load Testing Plan
What is Listeners in Apache JMeter?
Listeners are used to displaying the results of your jmeter performance tests. There are different types of listeners available in Apache JMeter. You can add them as per your requirements.
- Right-click on Thread Group -> Add -> Listener -> View Results Tree.
- Right-click on Thread Group -> Add -> Listener -> Summary Report.
- It will add both listeners under the test plan tree.
- Save sample load testing plan.
You can add any other samplers as well as per your testing requirement.
Now sample performance test plan is ready to run.
Step 5: Run Apache Jmeter Sample Load Test Plan
Now you can Run your sample test plan.
- You can Run a test plan by
- Clicking on the Start button or
- Selecting menu Run -> Start.
Our sample test plan will be executed with 5 concurrent threads (users) as per our Thread group configuration. It will loan 1 thread per second. Select View Result Tree listener during test execution to see how users are loaded to execute requests. You can increase the number of threads or Ramp up the period as per your requirement for more clarity.
Step 6: View Test Results
Load test results will be displayed in Listeners. You can view results by selecting both listeners one by one as below.
No comments:
Post a Comment