Apache JMeter vs. Black Duck Software Composition Analysis (SCA) vs. HCL AppScan

JMeter is well suited for Java applications where the user can script the scenario once and make changes to accommodate for as many numbers of users for load test execution. The image and selection of any files or exporting files scenario is handled well.

It is less appropriate to test Ajax applications where it is required to script click per use.

Incentivized

If you are using a lot of open-source libraries, which is most likely, this is a must-have to ensure no known vulnerabilities slip into production

Incentivized

In HCL AppScan automation maintain a reasonable pace of review and remediation of flaws for our apps. HCL AppScan is a cloud-based enterprise mobile application security testing solution for Android and iOS applications developed using Java, .Net or Objective-C. So it covers all our area and It consists of three components: AppScan Source Edition for developing and testing apps internally, AppScan Standard Edition for testing internally or externally, and AppScan Enterprise Edition for large enterprises who need to secure their entire mobile application portfolio across the organization with multiple device types.

Incentivized

• Easy of use - in generate load like HTTP requests, and processing/analyzing the responses. No coding is necessary at the basic level, just need to understand load testing and the infrastructure being tested.
• Automatic management of things like cookies to help with session state support - so you don't specifically have to worry about it or handle it
• Lots of testing/configuration options to suit your needs in making the right load generation (sampling requests), and analyzing the results, including any pre and post processing of the results first. Things like the Beanshell/BSF pre/post processors, response assertion, regular expression extractor, XPath extractor, CSV data set config
• There is a JMeter cloud service called BlazeMeter that I think would be useful for those that need to scale up high load without provisioning their own systems. I've not personally tried it though, but I recently attended a meetup presentation that highlighted nice useful features that BlazeMeter provides. One should evaluate the service if they are considering JMeter and need to expand beyond existing hardware resources.

• Quick inventory scan: Black Duck helps us scan the code repositories in no time. And quickly list the components and I now really know what is in my code.
• Security and License risk management: Black Duck being rich in its knowledge base about the vulnerabilities and license issues of open source components, quickly compares the identified inventory to the Black Duck knowledge base and lists all the vulnerabilities and license issues in the code.
• Integration for automatic scanning: Black Duck is part of devops which provides us automatic scanning. Black Duck is not just for devops but also SecOps.

Incentivized

• AppScan works well in finding application vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting and all of the OWASP top 10.
• Flexible reporting allows us to generate executive reports for application owners as well as separate technical reports for developers and system engineers.
• Technical reports include remediation information and cross reference CVSS scores
• Because it maintains data on all repeated assessments it helps us to do trending and metrics on compliance

Incentivized

• Jmeter requires many tweaks with respect to its configuration file and thread properties. users need to edit theses files themselves. There could be some interface where we can edit this fields.
• Jmeter cannot handle more threads and hangs up when we increase the number of threads. This causes lot of inconvenience. In these situations, user can be notified that such change would be lead to slow performance so that user can do as required. The same appears when we try to view huge files on graph listener.
• Jmeter should optimize the read and write access to output csv since it acts as overhead to the I/O performance. This affects our test results for the application which we are testing.

• License model based on usage is costly.
• Documentation is extensive, but often confusing.
• Black Duck Hub could use some feature improvements for more robust governance capabilities

Incentivized

• It can have a FAQ session in the Application itself.
• It can recommend the fix for the error that occurred during the scan.
• Like its storing multiple manuals explore, It should have the capability of storing multiple logins.

Incentivized

Price, Wiki and user sharing. Having access to the information provided by the developers and other open source providers is key for me. The ability to share information and get answers directly is very important to success in software testing. And the price of this product currently is amazing. Too many companies charge way too much money for products that are far behind in their value and pertinence

The purpose related to performance and load testing through Apache JMeter works fine but the usability of the tool should be improved quite a lot. If someone starts with the Jmeter fresh without prior experience, they need to put more efforts in understanding the tool. The UI is not that great which is the main reason not to give high rating on usability.

Incentivized

If you don’t know how to scan for the language, it isn’t entirely user friendly

Incentivized

I have been using JMeter for the last year. By using this tool, you can make sure the system will work under varied loads. It helps us to simulate real time scenarios by creating required virtual users and make sure the application will work under load. Perform load, stress, and stability testing using JMeter.

Incentivized

Support seems very responsive.

Incentivized

I have used LoadRunner and Silkperformer, and so far Jmeter turns out be the easiest to use of all these. While each of them have their own ROI, Jmeter can be picked by anyone in hours and start testing within a day. While with other tools, we need to get license, install them (takes a while) and setup tests and firewalls, etc.

Black Duck is an obvious choice, with its versatility, integration, best enterprise support and on top of the list the knowledge base Black Duck has. Vega or Grabber also scans the application and tells about vulnerabilities. But it can never be compared with the feature set of Black Duck. Black Duck can also generate reports.

Incentivized

Both solutions are decent, however, I had team members who had the experience working with HCL AppScan. Also, the product was priced nominally which suited our budget. Further, HCL AppScan's user community was bigger and many learning resources were freely available which helped junior peers learn quickly and eliminate any issues

Incentivized

• Good ROI on improving the performance of the application.
• Finding issues in the performance.
• Benchmark the performance results.
• CON: Need skillset to create and maintain the scripts in Java.
• Scripts are reusable and it is executed by any user.
• Need Client and Server setup to execute the scripts.

Incentivized

• It is hard to measure ROI since Black Duck Hub saves us from costly legal battles that have thankfully never had to happen.

Incentivized

• There are countless implementations to accomplish the same thing, and so many configurations are required.
• Even if you test it finished and find no vulnerabilities, there is no point if you just get the error screen.
• Until now, I was worried about vulnerabilities and security in software development, but I think it was good to find the vulnerability problem quickly with HCL AppScan.

Incentivized