What is Bluegrass?
We are building a framework for running performance tests (and hopefully stress tests in the future) against Enterprise Software components. The big difference between running performance tests on Enterprise Software and running it on something like a desktop application is that the configuration of the software itself becomes as important as the code that is running the test.
For example, when testing something like the start-up time for MS Word, you might write a test to start Word, and time how long it starts. This might be interested in a few different configurations (mainly how much memory is on the machine).
When testing something like JMS queues, you might write a test to put a message on a queue and take it off. In addition to just this code, you will want to be able to run this from many clients using many threads, so you can simlulate real load. In addition, you will want to test a number of scenarios that cannot be represented by the test you wrote, such as clustering vs non-clustering, durable Queues vs. non-Durable Queues, etc.
Bluegrass is here to help with this latter type of testing.
How are we getting started
We feel that when building a framework, it is often important to have a specific project to implement in that framework (to make sure your buiding the right thing). For us, we want that specific project to be performance tests for JMS. So if you have opinions on what a framework should look like, or opinions on what JMS tests should look like send 'em our way while the project is still a baby