The HTML Publisher plugin works perfectly for HTML reports. If, on the other hand, you want to (also)
publish non-HTML documents, such as text files, PDFs, and so forth, then the DocLinks plugin is for
you. This plugin is similar to the HTML Publisher plugin, but lets you archive both HTML reports as
well as documents in other formats. For example, in Figure 6.23, “The DocLinks plugin lets you archive
both HTML and non-HTML artifacts”, we have configured a build job to archive both a PDF document
and an HTML report. Both these documents will now be listed on the build home page.
Figure 6.23. The DocLinks plugin lets you archive both HTML and non-HTML artifacts
6.8. Automated Performance Tests with JMeter
Application performance is another important area of testing. Performance testing can be used to
verify many things, such as how quickly an application responds to requests with a given number
of simultaneous users, or how well the application copes with an increasing number of users. Many
applications have Service Level Agreements, or SLAs, which define contractually how well they should
perform.
Performance testing is often a one-off, ad-hoc activity, only undertaken right at the end of the project
or when things start to go wrong. Nevertheless, performance issues are like any other sort of bug—the
later on in the process they are detected, the more costly they are to fix. It therefore makes good of sense
to automate these performance and load tests, so that you can spot any areas of degrading performance
before it gets out into the wild.
JMeter^5 is a popular open source performance and load testing tool. It works by simulating load on your
application, and measuring the response time as the number of simulated users and requests increase.
It effectively simulates the actions of a browser or client application, sending requests of various sorts
(HTTP, SOAP, JDBC, JMS and so on) to your server. You configure a set of requests to be sent to