Test Plan

            A Test Plan is a logical container that contains different requests or operations required to create a performance test script. The different types of operations are carried out by different elements of the Test Plan. Using JMeter GUI for adding, removing and configuring the Test Plan elements.

The following are the few of the commonly used test plan elements

1. Thread Group
   Thread Groups are used to simulate virtual users in a performance test. We can have multiple thread groups simulating different types of operations performed by users on an application.
2. Sampler
   Samplers are the different requests which we can send to the server being tested. JMeter provides us various samplers like - HTTP, FTP, TCP, JDBC etc request samplers.
3. Logic Controllers
   Logic controller allow us to customize the way the Sampler requests is sent to the server. A common example of Logic Controller is Loop controller which makes a request multiple times to the server.
4. Timers
   Timers are used to halt the test execution for specified duration. Basically we use Timers to simulate real user wait Time or think time.
5. Assertions
   Assertions are used to perform some validations to check the correctness of the response received from the server.
6. Listeners
   Listeners in JMeter are used to save, view and analyze the test results in graphical or tabular forms.
7. Config elements

Config elements in JMeter are used to configure or modify the sampler requests made to the server. These elements are added at the same or higher level of the samplers that we want to configure.

Note : The test plan should have atleast one thread group.