Groovy support for JMeter

After watching the excellent presentation on performance testing given by Goranka Bjedov (QA Engineer at Google), my interest on JMeter increased exponentially. Planning for some testing of InfoQ upcoming features (oh yes, we have some surprises on our bag for this beginning of the year) I have giving it a try.
It took me a while to identify the elements involved while creating a scenario (by the way: JMeter name for scenarios: Test plan is not quite correct) and the components to be used, but the online documentation is not so bad.
However, while playing around I have felt the need to create some monitoring scripts (n.b. I am still working on this part). JMeter offers support for BSF and BSH out of the box, but having in mind the release of Groovy 1.0 I thought to try to add Groovy support to JMeter.
So, last night, armed with the Groovy intro chapter from The Definitive Guide to Grails and Groovy in Action [note], I have started my attempt. The task wasn't easy, but not because of some obvious reasons: different parts of JMeter are using different approaches (like being contributed by completely unrelated people that never looked at the existing code), so deciding how should I write it took me a while. However, in a couple of hours I am having an working version: 2 main classes that are reused for different UI parts and respectively for Groovy integration, an interface to allow extensions and a couple of almost empty classes for each component : PreProcessor, PostProcessor, Listener and Sampler. Total size: 12 classes, aprox. 300 usefull LOC, cca. 500 TLOC. The UI is not so nice but follows the existing JMeter UI (I haven't done any GUI work in the last couple of years so I am a bit rusty [smile/]). After doing this job, I think most pieces are pretty reusable so integrating other scripting solution like JRuby or even the JDK6 scripting support would be a very easy task.
I am thinking to contribute this code to either JMeter or a Groovy module, but I still need to decide. Meanwhile, let me know if you are interested in this integration.

PS: I am still wondering how can I get my hands on any of the Manning books. I have pinged them a couple of times, submitted a complaint but never heard back from them.

Update: thanks to Dierk Koenig (author of Groovy in Action) and Olivia (from Manning) the above problem seems to start having a solution. Thanks.

From Java5 to Java6 in 200 pages

With the release of Java6, I was looking for a quick introduction of the new things. Indeed, there are plenty of materials out there, disecting each and every small addition or change, but I was looking for a centralized information source. And I've found it in the form of the Java6 Platform Revealed book: a 200 page introduction to what is new or updated. What is even more interesting is that most of the things discussed are accompanied by short examples that are giving a bit more than just an overview. As a teaser, here are the chapters included in the book:

1. Java SE 6 at a Glance
2. Language and Utility Updates
3. I/O, Networking, and Security Updates
4. AWT and Swing Updates
5. JDBC 4.0
6. Extensible Markup Language
7. Web Services
8. The Java Compiler API
9. Scripting and JSR233
10. Pluggable Annotation Processing Updates

Even if you are not gonna need to work with all the aboves, it is always a good idea to know about them and I thinkg that having a place where to look for a short intro is quite cool (f.e. I got a better picture of what scripting inside the JDK is bringing). I have found pretty cool the idea of the tables summarizing deltas between Java5 and Java6 in the form:

Package Version Interfaces Classes Throwable Total
io       5.0      12         50      16+0      78
io       6.0      12         51      16+1      80
Delta              0          1       0+1       2

I am still a bit puzzled by why the Web Services are included in the JDK, but explaining the reasons is not the intend of the book. Wish you a happy upgrade!