Glossary
Controller
An interface that allows real-time control of a running Goose load test. Goose provides both Telnet and WebSocket controllers for dynamically adjusting test parameters like user count, hatch rate, and runtime during execution.
Coordinated Omission
A phenomenon that occurs in load testing when the measurement system inadvertently excludes the results of requests that were affected by server slowdowns, leading to misleadingly optimistic performance metrics. Goose includes Coordinated Omission Mitigation functionality to detect and correct for this.
Gaggle
Goose's distributed load testing functionality that allows running coordinated load tests across multiple machines. A Gaggle consists of one Manager and multiple Workers. Note: Gaggle support was temporarily removed in Goose 0.17.0.
GooseAttack
A load test defined by one or more Scenarios with one or more Transactions.
GooseConfiguration
A structure that defines all configuration options for a Goose load test, including user count, hatch rate, runtime, host, and various other parameters. Can be set via command line arguments, configuration files, or programmatically.
GooseError
A helper that defines all possible errors returned by Goose. A Transaction returns a TransactionResult, which is either Ok(()) or Err(GooseError).
GooseUser
A thread that repeatedly runs a single scenario for the duration of the load test. For example, when Goose starts, you may use the --users command line option to configure how many GooseUser threads are started. This is not intended to be a 1:1 correlation between GooseUsers and real website users.
Hatch Rate
The rate at which new GooseUsers are launched during the ramp-up phase of a load test, typically specified as users per second.
Request
A single request based around HTTP verbs.
Scenario
A scenario is a collection of transactions (aka steps) a user would undertake to achieve a specific user journey.
Test Plan
A flexible approach to scheduling load test phases, allowing you to define complex load patterns like gradual ramp-up, sustained load periods, spike testing, and graceful ramp-down. Test plans use the format users,duration;users,duration to specify multiple phases.
Throttle
A mechanism to limit the request rate of individual GooseUsers, helping simulate more realistic user behavior by introducing delays between requests rather than sending requests as fast as possible.
Transaction
A transaction is a collection of one or more requests and any desired validation. For example, this may include loading the front page and all contained static assets, logging into the website, or adding one or more items to a shopping chart. Transactions typically include assertions or expectation validation.
TransactionResult
A Result returned by Transaction functions. A transaction can return Ok(()) on success, or Err(GooseError) on failure.
Weight
A value that controls the frequency with which a Transaction or Scenario runs, relative to the other transactions in the same scenario, or scenarios in the same load test. For example, if one transaction has a weight of 3 and another transaction in the same scenario has a weight of 1, the first transaction will run 3 times as often as the second.