In an earlier post I discussed why you might want to use reusable components in Jmeter scripts, in that post I only focused on one possible way of doing that, the Module Controller. For the second part, as promised, I want to discuss the possible uses of the Include Controller.

Why use the Include Controller?

The include controller pretty much does what it states, it allows you to include something external into your test scenario. With controller you can include other JMX files into one single JMX file. So imagine a similar scenario as in the previous post, where you create a JMX specifically for the registration on an application, but then through different channels.

Example: A given application has several ways to communicate to it:

• Consumer webclient
• Backoffice webclient
• Mobile application (communicating via an API)

You can build a set of functional load scenarios for each side of the application, resulting in something like a frontend.jmx, backend.jmx and api.jmx

If you now want to have some full performancetests on the application you can combine these sets with the Include Controller into one big set without making it a huge, unmanageable JMX file.

How does it work?

In the JMX files as mentioned above, instead of a Thread Group you now use a Test Fragment to place your test steps in. If you do happen to use a Thread Group the settings for the thread group from the original JMX will be overridden with the settings from the thread group where the JMX is included.

To avoid confusion, the Test Fragment should be used instead.

Given the existing JMX files you need to use, you create a new project in Jmeter, which will be your master controller. Once you have built the different scenarios you need for your full scale performance test, you consider how these three should work together. Running 3 different JMeter instances, each with its own JMX is an option, however it will make life so much easier if you can actually create a proper flow with the different JMX files.
This Script will be relatively simple and may end up looking something like this:
You can now easily control several scripts, from within one or more thread groups within 1 Jmeter instance while still keeping things maintainable and reusable.