Stress Testing AJAX

Question

Hello

My web application is almost exclusively AJAX-based, where data is fetched via a web service and returned via JSON.

I'm using WAST to stress test, but I'm sure there are better tools out there for this job.

Does anyone have recommendations?

Thanks

Answer 1

You could also try JMeter.

http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/

Answer 2

I heard Selenium is good.

Answer 3

The 'ab' Apache Benchmarking tool that can send custom headers, take a file argument for post data, and write results to a CSV for you. Good if you're command-line savvy. "man ab" for more info.

Answer 4

Take a look at loadrunner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoadRunner

Answer 5

Ryan recommended Selenium, which isn't traditionally a load testing tool. He is correct that of all the recommendations so far, it's by far the best at handling AJAX. The reason is that Selenium drives a real web browser and can be programmed to "wait" for AJAX events to occur, such as a "DIV" element popping up or disappearing.

The problem with that approach is that browsers take up a ton of resources. You can't run more than 2-3 on a single server - far fewer than you can run VUs with JMeter. That's why I created BrowserMob, a service perfect for AJAX load testing.

As the co-creator of Selenium RC, I felt that using Cloud Computing was a great way to "have your cake and eat it too". Using hundreds of computers in the cloud, you can generate large volumes of load from real browsers, which handle AJAX very easy. To learn more on this subject, check an article I wrote for Ajaxian here.