Quick summary
Apex Hammer is a lightweight testing and load/stress tool used by Salesforce developers and architects to validate Apex behavior, measure performance, and simulate concurrent traffic to an org. It helps uncover governor-limit issues, concurrency bottlenecks, and unexpected behavior under load.
How Apex Hammer works
The tool executes Apex code (often through executeAnonymous or via Apex REST endpoints) repeatedly and in parallel to emulate multiple users or integrations calling your Apex logic. This lets you observe CPU time, heap usage, callout behavior, and governor limits under realistic or extreme load scenarios.
Common features and capabilities
Typical features you can expect from Apex Hammer-style tools:
- Concurrent execution of Apex snippets or requests
- Configurable number of threads, iterations, and ramp-up time
- Support for executing anonymous Apex, REST endpoints, or test classes
- Collection of basic metrics: success/failure counts, response times, and exception details
- Ability to run against sandboxes or scratch orgs safely (never production without caution)
When to use Apex Hammer
Use Apex Hammer when you need to:
- Validate that batchable or bulk code holds up under concurrent load
- Identify governor limit breaches that only appear under stress
- Benchmark performance improvements after refactoring
- Simulate integrations hitting REST/Apex endpoints at scale
Example usage (conceptual)
Most Apex Hammer-style tools offer a CLI or script-driven approach. A conceptual command could look like:
apex-hammer --org [email protected] --threads 20 --iterations 500 --apex-file loadTest.apex
Where parameters control the target org, concurrency level, total iterations, and the Apex script or endpoint to execute.
Best practices and safety
- Never run aggressive load tests against production. Use Full or Partial sandboxes and isolate test data.
- Reset or seed test data between runs to maintain consistent results.
- Monitor org limits and system logs (Debug logs, Event Monitoring) while testing.
- Start with low concurrency and gradually increase to understand breaking points.
- Combine load tests with targeted Apex tests to validate correctness under stress.
Alternatives and complementary tools
If you need a more feature-rich solution consider:
- Apache JMeter with Salesforce plugins — for HTTP-level load testing against REST endpoints
- Custom SFDX scripts or Node.js scripts using jsforce for orchestration
- Salesforce Apex test framework and CI runners for functional and regression testing
Interview tip
If asked about Apex Hammer in an interview, explain the concept (load/stress tool for Apex), give a short example of how it works, describe safety precautions (don’t run on production), and mention alternatives — this demonstrates practical knowledge and risk-aware thinking.
Further reading
Look for open-source projects and community tools that match the “Apex Hammer” concept on GitHub and the Salesforce Developer forums. Search terms that help: “Apex load testing”, “execute anonymous load test”, “Salesforce stress testing Apex”.