JMeter is a Java tool, which is used for performance Load Testing. Apache JMeter is an Apache project that can be used as a load testing tool for analyzing and measuring the performance of a variety of services, with a focus on web applications.
JMeter can be used as a unit-test tool for JDBC database connections, FTP, LDAP, Webservices, JMS, HTTP, generic TCP connections and OS native processes.
Stefano Mazzocchi of the Apache Software Foundation was the original developer of JMeter. He wrote it primarily to test the performance of Apache JServ (now called as Apache Tomcat project). Apache later redesigned JMeter to enhance the GUI and to add functional testing capabilities.
JMeter is a Java desktop application with a graphical interface that uses the Swing graphical API. It can therefore run on any environment / workstation that accepts a Java virtual machine, for example − Windows, Linux, Mac, etc.