Introduction to Apache JMeter

Page Contents

• Apache JMeter
• JMeter - Where and Why
  • Where to find JMeter
  • Why use JMeter?
• Next Steps
  • Description of JMeter core components
  • 1st time setup of JMeter
  • Creating your first Test Plan
  • Additional considerations: Static vs. Dynamic Content

Apache JMeter

Apache JMeter is open source software, a 100% pure Java desktop application designed to load test functional behavior and measure performance.

JMeter is accessible to everybody, from the largest corporations down to individuals running their own consultancy. When used properly, it offers the ability to gain valuable insights into the performance of SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, and can be used to maximize your return on investment (ROI) and lower your total cost of ownership (TCO).

Some discrete benefits of JMeter are:

• It may be used to test performance of both static resources such as JavaScript and HTML, as well as dynamic resources, such as JSP, Servlets, and AJAX.

• It can be used to simulate heavy load on an application to analyze overall performance under different types of load.

• It delivers a variety of graphical analyses of performance, such as graphs and charts, with a variety of results analysis tools available.

• It is Java based and open source, so provides a fully extensible platform for developers to continuously innovate on.

JMeter - Where and Why

Where to find JMeter

As part of the greater Apache project, JMeter benefits from a rich and knowledgeable community. You can download the tool from theJMeter Download Site and find a variety of useful tutorials and how-to articles on the official JMeter Wiki

Why use JMeter?

It is my firm belief that performance testing should be available to everybody. Without some form of benchmarking you cannot be confident that your BI Platform can handle the amount of usage you've estimated. Sizing calculators are a wonderful thing but they cannot take the specifics of your environment into consideration. You can read more about a general approach to performance testing in this SCN Blog

Now, there are many commercial performance testing tools on the market. Some of them, such as HP LoadRunner, are brilliant tools that make performance testing a fairly easy proposition for the people that can afford them. But what about the rest of us? As I mention above, performance testing should be available to everybody, and that's where JMeter really comes into play.

As free open source software, JMeter can be used by anybody. It does, however, require a fundamental understanding of how a particular application works. Web applications such as BI Platform create a unique user experience by using dynamic data that identifies a particular user, report, universe, or query. The large commercial performance testing tools are capable of automatically correlating this dynamic data for you and can simulate multiple users pretty easily.

JMeter doesn't have the same level of capability to automatically correlate dynamic data. JMeter was initially created for developers to load test their own applications, ones that they would naturally have an intimate familiarity with. Most people, unless they are SAP Developers, won't have the same level of familiarity with the BI Platform. The goal of this wiki is to provide you with the needed visibility into how BI Platform works "under the hood", along with the building blocks for creating JMeter Test Plans, so that you can create rich, complex performance tests that make your BI Platform implementation run better.

source ;https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/BI+Suite+Performance