Load testing a java/jscript web app?

June 15, 2006 7:30 AM

Are there any free/open source web app load testing tools that also handle javascript?

I need to load test a portal/web application, written in Java, that contains JavaScript.

I know there are free load testing tools out there (JMeter, The Grinder), but how about ones that can deal with JScript?

It certainly doesn't have to be anything super feature rich (although that's always a plus isn't it?), but since options like Mercury's LoadRunner are, for now, out of our reach, I'm needing to consider other options that are out there.

If anyone has any possibilities, I'd love to hear them.

posted by mrhaydel to computers & internet (3 comments total)

Javascript will not affect server load in any way; it's clientside code. I don't have any testing tools to recommend, but the fact that your app uses javascript shouldn't need to be a factor in your decision.
posted by ook at 1:05 PM on June 15, 2006

ook, that's not necessarily correct. First off, clientside javascript performance is important for many js-heavy applications. If you assume that your average user has a 1 GHz processor and not that much RAM, it's critical to test your javascript code to make sure it doesn't choke up their machine.

Secondly, in this age of AJAX, the javascript might be doing something that does have a big impact on server performance. Some people even have no server-generated HTML at all, and simply generate it all via javascript and AJAX fragment assembly.

Of course, you may be right that js isn't important for something described as a 'portal', but even that is not an excellent assumption.

That said, I also do not know of any free tools. I suspect that there are none. You could roll your own using Mozilla's SpiderMonkey. It actually looks like it wouldn't be that hard. Anyone want to start an open-source project to do so?
posted by breath at 2:37 PM on June 15, 2006

it's critical to test your javascript code to make sure it doesn't choke up their machine

While confirming clientside performance would be important in the (quite rare) situations where the clientside code is very processor-intensive, that's not what load testing programs are designed to do. All you need to test that is a single minimum-spec machine.
posted by ook at 5:38 PM on June 15, 2006