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JBlitz Professional is a pure Java^TM tool for carrying out stress, performance and functional testing on websites and web applications. It works by requesting web resources with a configurable loading and looking for errors in the responses as they are sent back. Resources can be sets of web pages, individual web pages, CGI scripts, Active Server Pages, Java Server Pages etc, in fact, anything that can be typed into the request line of a browser.

JBlitz has a built-in multi-threaded architecture designed to simulate multiple concurrent 'virtual users' and to exercise your site to the nth degree. You can simulate ten, fifty, hundreds or even thousands of virtual users accessing a web page or set of web pages in sequence. The limiting factors are the power of the machine and the bandwidth of the connection between your machine and the website's web server.

JBlitz is designed to detect errors as they occur, exposing any weaknesses in your website's server-side functionality by stressing many web pages simultaneously. Often, server side technology is vulnerable to multiple concurrent requests, especially at high volume. For example, a database update routine could contend with other database access routines. Badly coded server side software compromises your website, can lose you customers and can lose you money!

JBlitz is fully extensible with a Java^TM API that allows you to extend, modify or replace parts of the query engine, listen to events as they occur, check each web page download for accuracy and timeliness, integrate with your own or third party software and a host of other things besides.

JBlitz is designed to be easy to use. Help panels are added throughout to give guidance. Keyboard assignments have wherever possible been included to facilitate 'power' users. Tooltips are helpful and informative. Each website and web page entered is remembered across runs. In fact, all settings from the previous run are re-applied the next time you start JBlitz.

To get started with JBlitz:

• Download the free evaluation version of JBlitz. It comes packaged in a variety of formats including a windows install program.
• Follow the installation instructions to install JBlitz to a folder of your choice. Click on the icon created during installation to run JBlitz.
• Follow our online step by step guide to configuring your test cases. Each test case targets a specific functional area of your website or web application and can be assigned an arbitrary number of virtual users. Each virtual user steps through the download sequence as defined in the test case checking for errors as it goes.
• All your settings are saved into an XML based test configuration file. Test results are stored similarly.

Remember: Right mouse button options are provided in many places. Help panels are shown on most screens to explain them in summary. Tool-tips give further guidance for most controls and widgets. Email any questions no matter how trivial to us - we are only too happy to be of help.

The free evaluation version of JBlitz has the same functionality as the retail version except that:

• It expires after 30 days from the date of first use.
• It is limited to 3 test cases with a maximum of 20 virtual users each.
• The maximum run time is 10 minutes. The evaluation version of JBlitz will load test for 10 minutes and no more.
• The minimum pause time between requests is limited to 2000ms. This is at neutral throttle. This pause time can be reduced from 2000ms to 1000ms (but no lower) at higher throttles.
• The test scheduler can only schedule a single test configuration. Multiple configurations can be run back to back in the retail version.
• The evaluation version is not supported. Feedback and comments are welcome, but no bug fixes, patches or any other type of support is provided.

JBlitz has several command line parameters.

If running JBlitz from the command prompt or shell, type these in after the rest of the command line (see below).

If you're running on Windows and you installed using the Windows installer, you'll need to pass them as parameters into either the installed short-cuts or the launch executable JBlitz Pro.exe so that they get passed on into the Java application. See the installation instructions for more.

• <config_file>. Specify the name of the test configuration to load. The test configuration file is an XML file which defines all aspects of the current test environment. This includes all error settings, state settings, web page settings, http header settings, log settings etc.
• -ini <inifile>. Specify the name of an ini file to use. JBlitz uses XML ini files to store general settings such as the window location and the name of the current test plan.
• -debug http. Signal JBlitz to output http related diagnostic information to the standard output device. This feature is useful in troubleshooting unexpected errors or responses from your website. JBlitz will output the HTTP request it makes for each web page alongside state information (the state information indicates whether cookie handling is enabled, and whether any reply based state information has been transferred from the previous reply onto this request.
• -debug custom. Signal JBlitz to output customization module related diagnostic information to the standard output device. This feature is useful in troubleshooting errors or general behavior within customization modules.
• -installdir <install directory>. Specify the installation directory to JBlitz. The installation folder defaults to the application folder if you're running the launch executable JBlitz Pro.exe. Otherwise, you may need to specify this option to let JBlitz know where to find its contents help.
• -custom <customization module class name>. Specify a customization module for JBlitz to load. This parameter overrides any customization module that has been defined through the GUI. The class name is the fully qualified name (i.e. with dot separated package specification) of the class that implements the com.clan.jblitz.custom.CustomModule interface. This class and its dependents need to be included in the JBlitz application classpath. See the customization API help for more.
• -disableredirects. Disable automated handling of response redirections. By default (without this flag), JBlitz will handle all 3XX responses from the server by redirecting to the redirection target. Specify this flag to prevent this.
• -console. Specify this flag to make JBlitz run in console mode. Console mode is a text only non GUI mode of operation. This mode of operation requires that you have already setup a test configuration - by default, JBlitz will automatically start running the last used test configuration. In console mode, there is no GUI, so you will receive less feedback about the run. However, any logging that you have configured will still operate - i.e. logging to stdout or to a file. Use this mode with the -hash parameter as described below to issue a hash mark for each 4K of data read.
• -hash. Use in conjunction with -console only to make JBlitz issue a hash mark every 4K of data read (similarly to how ftp -hash works).

An example command line for launching JBlitz Professional is shown below. It assumes you have a Java v1.4, 1.5 or 1.6 installed with 'java.exe' in your path and that your current working directory is the installation folder.

java -Xmx192m -classpath jblitz.jar;lib/customization_samples.jar com.clan.jblitz.app.Pro

NOTE, when using Sun's 1.4 JRE specify also the -XX options which are required memory settings.

java -Xmx192m -XX:NewSize=32m -XX:MaxNewSize=32m -XX:SurvivorRatio=2 <then as above...>

More details are given in the installation instructions.