Why Fitnesse+RestFixture over JMeter?

Question

I have been learning Fitnesse+RestFixture and it appears to me that JMeter could do everything that can be done using Fitnesse (eps. perfoming tests using URIs through http verbs)? Could someone shed some light on this please?

Answer 1

FitNesse is an acceptance testing tool, where JMeter mainly is an performance testing tool. In acceptance testing, the recipient of the test and test result might not be a technical person. Therefore, how you define your tests and how the results are presented are important matters.

Snipped from Wikipedia on Acceptance testing

Acceptance Tests/Criteria (in Agile Software Development) are usually created by business customers and expressed in a business domain language. [...] These tests are created ideally through collaboration between business customers, business analysts, testers, and developers. [...] The business customers (product owners) are the primary project stakeholder of these tests. As the user stories pass their acceptance criteria, the business owners can be reassured the developers are progressing in the right direction.

A non technical person might have problem to interpret raw HTTP/XML/JSON/etc., whereas the business language can be defined together with testers and developers. But hey, let's see an acceptance test example for a fictive Lottery, using FitNesse with SLiM and with RestFixture, a fictive request builder fixture, and a fictive database fixture.

#Content of the actual test page, it could be named after the user story:
#IfNoActiveDrawsIsAvailableAnEmptyListShouldBeReturned
!|script|Database Fixture|
|given that no active draws exists|

!|script|Request Builder Fixture|
|Build a request for active draws|

!|script|Rest Script Fixture | ${SERVER_URL}|
|when the request is sent to the get active draw service|
|check| that the response is successful|
|check| that the response contains an draw list|
|check| that the response contains| 0| active draws on the lottery|

In this way, the tester and the developer has hidden all of the technical implementation and transformed it into an easy read test.