Performance testing is a non functional testing. In this type of testing, speed or efficiency of the software is tested. Performance testing is a testing process where in the performance of software is tested with different factors like number of users, data, resources and usage of software. The response time, throughput etc of are tested. The goal of this testing is not to find bugs but to improve the software’s performance or efficiency.
The main focus is checking the software programs for below features:
- Speed: It finds whether the application responds quickly
- Scalability: It determines maximum user load that a software can support
- Stability: It determines where software can be stable under different load.
Why performance testing is necessary?
Performance testing specifies what needs to be improved before the software is released to the client. Without the performance testing the software applications suffer from issues like running slow for multiple users using simultaneously, inconsistencies for different operating systems and poor usability.
Types of performance testing are:
Load testing:
it checks the ability of software to perform under the loads.it identifies the bottlenecks of software.
Stress testing:
It determines the testing software under extreme conditions to see how it handles the high traffic or data processing.
Endurance testing:
It is done to know whether the software handle’s under the load for long period of time.
Spike testing:
It tests the software’s reaction over sudden spikes generated by the load when users use
Volume testing:
it monitors the software’s behavior over the large data in the database it checks the software performance under varying database volumes.
Scalability testing:
It determines the software effectiveness to support an increase in the user load.
Example of performance testing are:
Checking if email applications could be loaded with 1000 users at a time. We can perform transactions like send, delete, read save in different ways. By simulating the 1000 transactions per hour for single user, possibility to load the test email server by occupying it with more transactions (10000) per hour.
Questions
- What are the techniques of the performance testing?
- What are the advantages of the performance testing?
- Give some examples for spike testing?