what is different between summary report and aggregate report?

Question

In jmeter load testing, what is the difference between summary report and aggregate report? Which one is the best?

And why in aggregate report 90%,95%,99% is given?

Answer 1

Not much difference in fact:

• Summary Report has:

  • Standard Deviation
  • Average Bytes

• Aggregate Report has:

  • Median (50% line), 90, 95 and 99 percentiles.

Given you're new to JMeter I would recommend the following:

1. Once you finish developing your test, run it with 1-2 users using View Results Tree listener and ensure that it does exactly what you expect
2. Disable all listeners. They cause overhead on JMeter side consuming lots of resources which may be required to create the load.

3. Run JMeter test in command-line non-GUI mode like:

   jmeter -n -t /path/to/test.jmx -l /path/to/results.jtl
   

4. Once test finishes open JMeter GUI, add listener(s) you need - you can add any listener you like at this stage and perform results analysis.

P.S. Some people find custom listeners provided by JMeter Plugins project easier to understand and interpret.

Answer 2

They are almost same except that Aggregate report gives the median,90% line etc. Due to that Aggregate report consumes more memory & summary reports takes less memory!!

Check here for more details

1. Aggregate Report
2. Summary Report

Calculation of the Median and 90% Line (90th percentile) values requires additional memory. JMeter now combines samples with the same elapsed time, so far less memory is used. However, for samples that take more than a few seconds, the probability is that fewer samples will have identical times, in which case more memory will be needed. Note you can use this listener afterwards to reload a CSV or XML results file which is the recommended way to avoid performance impacts. See the Summary Report for a similar Listener that does not store individual samples and so needs constant memory.

Median / 90% / 95% lines:

• Median - The median is the time in the middle of a set of results. 50% of the samples took no more than this time; the remainder took at least as long. Median is another name of 50% line.
• 90% Line - 90% of the samples took no more than this time. The remaining samples took at least as long as this. (90th percentile)
• 95% Line - 95% of the samples took no more than this time. The remaining samples took at least as long as this. (95th percentile)

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Actually you should be running your test in non-GUI mode w/o any listener. Once the test is done, You can import the jtl in any listener you want to see the results!!