Performance Testing

Introduction:

• How much pounds of weight you can lift in gym? 200 pounds, 300 pounds, 1000 pounds? Every person has a breaking point, mentally, physically and intellectually. The same principal applies in load testing as well.
• How much load can server handle at a specific point of time? 100 users, 200 users, 10K users? Every server has a breaking point.
• The main objective of load testing is to study the behaviors of the application under test (AUT) under specific load circumstances.
• Load testing helps engineers to understand the applications’ behavior and availability.

Load testing addresses following queries:

·         Does the latest codes shows desired performance?

·         Does the new change in the hardware configuration perform well?

·         Does the new business rule or feature that implemented makes significant effect?

·         Does the upgrade in the environment works under limits?

What is Performance Testing?

Performance testing is the process of determining the speed or effectiveness of System under Test and also to verifying quality attributes of the system like responsiveness, Speed, Scalability, Stability under variety of load conditions.

Performance can be classified into three main categories:

• Speed — does the application respond quickly enough for the intended users?
• Scalability — Will the application handle the expected user load and beyond?
• Stability — is the application stable under expected and unexpected user loads?

Why performance testing?

• Does the application respond quickly enough for the intended users?
• Will the application handle the expected user load and beyond?
• Will the application handle the number of transactions required by the business?
• Is the application stable under expected and unexpected user loads?