Performing preliminary load testing on web applications does not require the use of complex tools such as Load Runner.
An open-source tool called The Grinder provides a simple way for developers to perform load testing before handing out the application to Quality Assurance.
With The Grinder, the load tests are defined using Jython scripts, and then are run by agents which could be distributed over the network. A property file defines which load tests should be run, how many times, and on how many threads. A central application referred to as the console starts the agents, collects the responses, and monitors the number of requests per second (RPS). The authors of this tool provide a short but useful overview of the architecture.
Installing The Grinder is a matter of unzipping the archive since the tool is written in Java. However, making the tool work as indented requires to dig into the documentation a little bit.
This article is intended to assist people interested in getting up and running the tool on a Widows environment as quickly as possible.
