When it comes to performance testing, JMeter is fantastic... but not perfect. Automation and integration with other systems can be a pain, and the tool itself comes with a steep learning curve. In this post, we'll take a look at Taurus, an open source test automation tool that extends and abstracts JMeter, and helps to overcome these challenges. Taurus provides a simple way to create, run and analyze performance tests.

Intro to Taurus - Making Test Automation Simple
Here is a bit of the obvious: the load testing process isn’t limited to developing and running a load test. Moreover, those don’t cover even close to 50% of associated activities which includes:

• load test scenario definition and design
• load test scenario parameterization and execution
• load test scenario results analysis
• integration of all above processes into the software development life cycle
• automation of all of the above

Here at BlazeMeter, we’re strong believers of the open-source doctrine and big JMeter fans, but we also know that JMeter is not perfect. We’re actively contributing to make it better, but there are still a few drawbacks. Some of these potentially will never be truly fixed, like scary XML jmx files syntax, poor reporting capabilities and not-so-obvious approaches to set load test scenario details i.e. ramp-up, ramp-down, time to hold the load, concurrency, etc.

Beyond JMeter, the list of popular free and open source tools include alternatives such as The Grinder or Gatling, each having its own advantages and disadvantages. Each tool needs to be configured differently and the load test results output format differs as well.

This is why we encourage you to start using Taurus - our free and open source automation framework, which is basically an abstraction layer over JMeter (or Grinder or Gatling or Selenium, with more tool support upcoming). Taurus provides:

• extremely simple setup and upgrading
• an easily-readable, version control friendly and unified DSL (Domain-specific language) to define load test scenarios
• the ability to execute existing JMeter (or Grinder or Gatling or Selenium) tests
• the ability to create new tests from scratch using the aforementioned DSL
• the ability to merge multiple existing test scripts and/or DSL-driven tests into a single scenario
• real-time reporting
• multiple test output formats, including but not limited to:
• a native results format of the underlying testing tool
• integration with the blazemeter.com reporting service
• console stats and pseudo-graphic charts during the test execution (which can be combined with the BlazeMeter integration
• a JUnit-compatible test results format
• an easy way to define flexible pass/fail criteria. In case the results exceed a threshold, it is possible to automatically mark tests as failed
• platform-independency - Taurus runs where Python and Java can run

Taurus is an acronym that stands …