Gatling (software)

Gatling is an open-source load- and performance-testing framework based on Scala, Akka and Netty. The first stable release was published on January 13, 2012. In 2015, Gatling's founder, Stéphane Landelle, created a company (named "Gatling Corp"), dedicated to the development of the open-source project. According to Gatling Corp's official blog, Gatling was downloaded more than 800,000 times (August 2017).[1] In June 2016, Gatling officially presented Gatling FrontLine, Gatling's Enterprise Version with additional features.[2]

Gatling
Gatling reports screenshot
Type of businessPrivate
Type of site
Open-source load and performance testing for web applications
Available inEnglish
FoundedJuly 1, 2015 (2015-07-01)
HeadquartersBagneux, France
Area servedWorldwide
Founder(s)Stéphane Landelle (CEO)
IndustrySoftware
ProductsGatling, Gatling FrontLine (Enterprise Version)
URLgatling.io
Launched13 January 2012 (2012-01-13)
Current statusActive
Written inScala

The software is designed to be used as a load testing tool for analyzing and measuring the performance of a variety of services, with a focus on web applications.

Gatling was mentioned twice in ThoughtWorks Technology Radar, in 2013 and 2014,[3] "as a tool worth trying",[3] with an emphasis on "the interesting premise of treating your performance tests as production code".[3]

The latest stable release is Gatling 3.4.0. It was published on September 23, 2020.[4]

Overview

Gatling Corp develops the open-source performance testing tool for web applications, Gatling, and its enterprise version, Gatling FrontLine. The Project's aims include;

  • High performance
  • Ready-to-present HTML reports
  • Scenario recorder and developer-friendly DSL

Terminology
  • Simulation: The simulation file includes the different scenarios of a test, its parametrization and the injection profiles. Technically speaking, a simulation is a Scala class.[5] Here is an example of a simulation:[6]
class BasicSimulation extends Simulation {

  val httpConf = http
    .baseURL("http://computer-database.gatling.io")
    .acceptHeader("text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8")
    .doNotTrackHeader("1")
    .acceptLanguageHeader("en-US,en;q=0.5")
    .acceptEncodingHeader("gzip, deflate")
    .userAgentHeader("Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/31.0")

  val scn = scenario("BasicSimulation")
    .exec(http("request_1")
    .get("/"))
    .pause(5)

  setUp(
    scn.inject(atOnceUsers(1))
  ).protocols(httpConf)
}
  • Scenario: A scenario consists of a series of requests. Each scenario within a simulation can have its own injection profile.[7] Here is an example of a scenario:[6]
  val scn = scenario("BasicSimulation")
    .exec(http("request_1")
    .get("/"))
    .pause(5)

  setUp(
    scn.inject(atOnceUsers(1))
  ).protocols(httpConf)
  • Group: Groups can be used as a subdivision of a scenario. It is also a series of requests, that has a functional purpose (for instance, the login process).
  • Request: Gatling is able to simulate complex users' behaviors. For this purpose, it generates the appropriate requests in the system under test. Here is an example of a request in Gatling:[6]
exec(http("request_1")
  .get("/"))
  .pause(5)
  • Injection profile: An injection profile is the number of virtual users injected during the test in the system under test and how they are injected. Here is an example of an injection profile:[6]
setUp(
  scn.inject(atOnceUsers(1))
).protocols(httpConf)

Architecture

Gatling implemented a fully new architecture for a performance testing tool, in order to be more resource efficient.[8] It makes it possible to simulate a high number of requests per second with a single machine.[9]

Components

Recorder

Gatling comes up with a recorder to bootstrap a simulation.

Domain-specific language

Gatling is provided with a simple[10] and lightweight[3] Domain-specific language, in which simulations and scenarios are coded. This allows users to add custom behavior through many hooks.[11] This makes simulation scripts readable and easy to maintain.[12] This is an example of how Gatling's Domain-specific language looks like (see also § Terminology):

val scn = scenario("BasicSimulation")
  .exec(http("request_1")
  .get("/"))
  .pause(5)

HTML reports

At the end of each test, Gatling generates an HTML report. Reports include:[13]

  • Active users over time
  • Response time distribution
  • Response time percentiles over time
  • Requests per second over time
  • Responses per second over time

Protocols support and plugins

It officially supports the following protocols:

Gatling documentation states that it is protocol agnostic, which makes it possible to implement other protocols' support.[14] Here is a non-exhaustive list of community protocols support:

Plugins

Gatling comes out with official and community plugins. It integrates with:

Here is a non-exhaustive list of community plugins:

Continuous integration

Automation with Gatling is related to its simulations' maintainability.[15] The integration with other developer tools, especially in the DevOps lifecycle, makes it possible to industrialize performance tests, that is to say to fully automate the execution of performance testing campaigns in the software development process.

Major and minor releases[16]
VersionRelease date
3.0.023 October 2018
2.3.030 August 2017
2.2.015 April 2016
2.1.015 December 2014
2.0.06 October 2014
1.5.06 May 2013
1.4.020 December 2012
1.3.019 September 2012
1.2.031 May 2012
1.1.026 March 2012
1.0.013 January 2012

Licensing

Gatling is published under Apache License 2.0,[17] a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF).[18]

The source code is accessible on GitHub.

Gatling FrontLine

Gatling FrontLine is the enterprise version of Gatling. Gatling FrontLine is under proprietary license. It is distributed by Gatling Corp.

Company

Gatling started as an open-source project in 2012. 3 years later, in 2015, its founder, Stéphane Landelle, created a dedicated company named "Gatling Corp".

Origins of the open-source project

Gatling was designed by Stéphane Landelle when he was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of a French IT consulting firm, eBusiness Information.

Creation of a dedicated company

In 2015, a dedicated company was created. It provides Gatling's users with professional services and, since 2016, with an Enterprise Version of Gatling, Gatling FrontLine.

The company is based in Bagneux, France, near Paris. It is a subsidiary of the IT consulting firm where it was created, eBusiness Information.

Gatling Corp is a member of Systematic Paris-Region, an Île-de-France business cluster created in 2005,[19] devoted to complex systems and ICT.[20] Systematic Paris-Region gathers large groups, SMEs, universities and research labs to promote digital innovation. Gatling is a member of Systematic's Open Source Working Group and was elected member of Systematic's board of directors, as a representative of SMEs, in November 2016.

The company took part in some events, like the Paris Open Source Summit (POSS, 2015, 2016 and 2017 editions), Liferay's 2016 Symposium, Java User Group (JUG)'s meetings, the Paris Gatling User Group and the New York Gatling User Group.

See also

References
  1. "Gatling has reached 800,000 downloads!". Gatling official website. Gatling. Retrieved September 1, 2017.
  2. "Soirée de présentation Gatling FrontLine". Gatling Paris User Group (in French). Meetup. Retrieved September 1, 2017.
  3. Rodrigo Tolledo (12 May 2014). "Gatling: Take Your Performance Tests to the next Level". Blog. ThoughtWorks. Retrieved September 1, 2017.
  4. "Gatling Frontline 1.12.0 and Gatling 3.4.0 are out! – Gatling Open-Source Load Testing". Gatling Open-Source Load Testing. 2020-09-23. Retrieved 2020-10-29.
  5. Lyudmil Latinov (9 June 2017). "Performance testing with Gatling". Automation Rhapsody. Retrieved September 1, 2017. “Simulation” is the actual test. It is a Scala class that extends Gatling’s io.gatling.core.scenario.Simulation class. Simulation has a HTTP Protocol object instantiated and configured with proper values as URL, request header parameters, authentication, caching, etc. Simulation has one or more “Scenario”.
  6. Gatling Corp. "Gatling Documentation, Quickstart". Gatling Corp. Retrieved January 12, 2018.
  7. Lyudmil Latinov (9 June 2017). "Performance testing with Gatling". Automation Rhapsody. Retrieved September 1, 2017. Scenario is a series of HTTP Requests with different action (POST/GET) and request parameters. Scenario is the actual user execution path. It is configured with load users count and ramp up pattern. This is done in the Simulation’s “setUp” method. Several scenarios can form one simulation.
  8. Siva Prasad Rao Janapati (1 February 2017). "Gatling: A Lightweight Load Testing Tool". Performance Zone. DZone. Retrieved September 1, 2017. Gatling consumes fewer system resources to run a load test than other options.
  9. Lyudmil Latinov (9 June 2017). "Performance testing with Gatling". Automation Rhapsody. Retrieved September 1, 2017. It is capable of creating an immense amount of traffic from a single node.
  10. Sree Tejaswi (4 January 2017). "An Introduction to Load Testing With Gatling". DevOps Zone. DZone. Retrieved September 1, 2017. It is an easy-to-install tool where simulations and scenarios are coded in a simple domain-specific language (DSL).
  11. http://gatling.io/docs/current/cheat-sheet/
  12. Sree Tejaswi (4 January 2017). "An Introduction to Load Testing With Gatling". DevOps Zone. DZone. Retrieved September 1, 2017. You can thus generate readable and easy to maintain performance test code.
  13. Sree Tejaswi (4 January 2017). "An Introduction to Load Testing With Gatling". DevOps Zone. DZone. Retrieved September 1, 2017.
  14. "Gatling". Documentation. Gatling Corp. Retrieved September 1, 2017. As the core engine is actually protocol agnostic, it is perfectly possible to implement support for other protocols.
  15. Federico Toledo (12 July 2016). "Gatling Tool Review for Performance Tests (Written in Scala)". Performance Zone. DZone. Retrieved September 1, 2017. The language, Scala, and Gatling’s DSL are pretty focused on facilitating the maintainability of the tests, which is ideal if you are focusing on continuous integration
  16. "Milestones". Gatling's repository. GitHub. Retrieved September 1, 2017.
  17. "License". Gatling's repository. GitHub. Retrieved September 1, 2017.
  18. New Media Rights (2008-09-12). "Open Source Licensing Guide". California Western School of Law. Retrieved 2015-11-28. The ‘BSD-like’ licenses such as the BSD, MIT, and Apache licenses are extremely permissive, requiring little more than attributing the original portions of the licensed code to the original developers in your own code and/or documentation.
  19. (in French)Systematic Paris-Région Archived 2013-02-17 at Archive.today
  20. (in French)Qui sommes-nous?
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