I am new to Jmeter and trying to understand what all can be achieved using Jmeter. I want to perform endurance or soak testing of a application using Jmeter, i.e. I want to run a particular script for a particluar number of users for a period of 3 hours. What all options are available to me and what is the best availablelistener to monitor the result?
Please help. Kindly add if I am missing anything that I should know before starting with soak testing?
For setting up the numbers of users and runtime of the test you use a Thread Group. Setting the runtime is done by checking the Scheduler check-box and specifying Duration.
Of the original listeners in JMeter I have found myself most oftenly just using the plain Summary Report. But JMeter Plugins gives additional listeners which may be better, it depends on what you want to measure. The JMeter Plugins also gives additional thread groups, where you can specify e.g. an increasing load over time.
Use a Thread Group to set up your number of users and the duration of your test (using the scheduler of the Thread Group).
Then add all the samplers and logic controllers you need to perform your testing. Next, add a Summary Report listener to get an overview of your results (min/max/average and such), and add a View Result Tree listener to get an overview of EACH step your testplan is taking. This Tree listener is great to actually see what jmeter is doing, and to debug your tesplan.
BTW: if you add a HTTP Request Defaults object, you can set your URL and options in there, and don't need to add it to each and every sampler again. Especially works like a charm if you start using regexp extractors and such.
