Types of Performance Testing

In this blog, we will read different types of performance testing, but before that, you need to understand what performance testing is all about.

Performance testing is a kind of software testing that helps check whether the software or application can perform under heavy load and whether it can meet customer’s requirements such as stability, speed, and stability while running an application.

Types of Performance Testing - Explained!

Several types of performance testing come in software testing that you need to know if you are project managers, product managers, performance test engineers, software testers, or the person who just enters this field but face too many complications while identifying errors or testing the performance of an application.

• Load Testing.
• Capacity Testing.
• Volume Testing.
• Stress Testing.
• Soak Testing.

Load Testing

It is a non-functional testing type that helps to understand the behavior of the application/software under a particular expected load. It also comes under the kind of performance testing that is considered when it comes to determining the system's performance under various load conditions. It helps you know how many users your application can handle at one time. It lets you identify the sufficiency of the infrastructure that is used for hosting any application.

Some load testing examples involve:

• Reading and writing data from a hard disk consistently.
• Executing two or more applications on a server or a computer simultaneously.
• Downloading a variety of large files from the internet.
• Allocating two or more jobs to a printer in a specific queue.

Capacity Testing

Capacity testing is one of the performance testing types that is used when it is the matter of checking how many transactions or users a web application will support or fulfill performance needs. It is performed mainly for future prospects. One can consider capacity planning to increase the volume of data and user base. If you want to accommodate the future load, you have to know how many extra resources like memory usage, processor capacity, network bandwidth, and disk capacity are essential to support future usage levels.

When to run capacity testing:

• When it is a matter of understanding that the application will support the future load or not.
• If you want to predict problems in terms of potential user-base growth, scalability, or know about the software’s capacity.
• When you want to analyze whether the app’s environment is capable of handling the upcoming increased load or not.

Volume Testing

Volume testing is also known as flood testing because it defines how efficiently the application can perform with an estimated and huge amount of data.

An example of volume testing is a new website of any college or a school that contains a small amount of students' data. After a few years, this data can be increased in the website's database, and it can make the application heavier. Due to this scenario, getting a volume test can ensure that the application or software will never be affected even after more data storage.

When to execute volume testing:

• If you want to check the system's capacity and identify bottlenecks, this type of testing can be considered.
• From healthcare, banking, insurance, retail, government, energy & utilities to transportation, these are some industries that make big data applications, which need to be tested with volume testing.

Stress Testing

Stress testing or fatigue testing helps evaluate the stability of an entity, critical infrastructure, or a given software. The unexpected increasing user traffic on the Apple website or the release day of a new iPhone is the best example that requires stress testing in the real world. It is the activity of software testing that helps check the robustness of an application while testing outside the standard conditions.

Who needs Stress testing?

Companies that handle investments and assets mainly need stress testing to identify risks in the portfolio. It allows us to verify the unexpected failures that do not cause any security issues. With stress testing, it becomes easier for financial industries to check the performance of their software during failures, and it helps confirm Whether the data is successfully stored in the system before crashing or not. And, you can imagine that any loss of data in banking or financial application not only puts your customers at risk but also spoils your business.

Soak Testing

The other name of Soak testing is Endurance testing that one can consider if it is the point to evaluate that the application can handle continuous loads for a more extended period of time or how the software will perform with a normal workload. This type of testing is favorable for memory leaks that occur when a system fails to launch a discarded memory.

What will happen if soak testing is missing?

• The application will crash, or the operating system can cause failure due to the severe memory leak in the system.
• Any failure in the database connection under some conditions could lead to a complete system crash.
• If one doesn't close the connections between the system layers, the possibility is that there will be slow performance given by some modules.
• The application can become less efficient, and the system’s response time can show gradual degradation.

Common Tools that Come in the List of Performance Testing Types

• Apache JMeter.
• LoadUI Pro.
• LoadRunner.
• AppLoader.
• LoadNinja.
• WebLOAD.
• NeoLoad.
• Silk Performer.
• SmartMeter.io.
• WAPT Pro.
• LoadComplete.
• Appvance.
• LoadView.

Performance Testing: One Solution of Major Complaints

During performance testing, developers found common performance issues like slow response time, poor stability, long load time, and bottlenecks. Sometimes insufficient hardware resources and software configuration issues occur while calculating the performance of the software. But, the solution to all these problems are only performance testing that companies perform in the following steps:

• Understand the testing environment.
• Pinpoint performance metrics.
• Planning & designing several performance tests.
• Get the configuration of the test environment.
• Implementing test design.
• Executing tests one-by-one.
• Test Analysis.
• Preparing reports & Retesting if required.

Conclusion