Performance Testing Sub-Genres

This is the simplest form of performance testing. A load test is usually conducted to understand the behavior of the application under a specific expected load. This load can be the expected concurrent number of users on the application performing a specific number of transaction within the set duration. This test will give out the response times of all the important business critical transactions. If the database, application server, etc are also monitored, then this simple test can itself point towards the bottleneck in the application software.

This testing is normally used to break the application. Double the number of users are added to the application and the test is run again until the application breaks down. This kind of test is done to determine the application’s robustness in times of extreme load and helps application administrators to determine if the application will perform sufficiently if the current load goes well above the expected load.

This test is usually done to determine if the application can sustain the continuous expected load. During endurance tests, memory utilization is monitored to detect potential leaks. Also important, but often overlooked is performance degradation. That is, to ensure that the throughput and/or response times after some long period of sustained activity are as good or better than at the beginning of the test.

Spike testing, as the name suggests is done by spiking the number of users and understanding the behavior of the application whether it will go down or will it be able to handle dramatic changes in load.

Scalability testing is an extension of performance testing – it’s part of the battery of non-functional tests, is the testing of a software application for measuring its capability to scale up or scale out in terms of any of its non-functional capability – be it the user load supported, the number of transactions, the data volume etc. The purpose of scalability testing is to identify major workloads and mitigate bottlenecks that can impede the scalability of the application.

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