Volume testing is a type of non functional testing where software is subjected to large volume of data to analyse the performance of the system. It is also called as Flood testing. With this type of testing the impact of response time and system behavior can be determined.
The objective of volume testing is
- It is used to check whether there is any loss of data
- Used to check the response time
- Data is stored correctly or not
- Verify if the data is overwritten
- Check all the warning messages and error messages
- Check the high volume data has some effect on speed processing of the system
The challenges of volume testing are:
- It is difficult to generate fragmentation of memory
- Difficult for dynamic generation of keys.
- Relational integrity of generated data
For example: If a volume test has to be done for the application with a specific database size we will expand the database application to that size then test the performance of it. Another example is if there is a requirement of an application to interact with the interface file which is reading or writing from file or to file. The database is stretched to the maximum threshold point and large volume of data is added and tested for system’s response.
The main characteristics of volume testing is
- In development phase, small amount of data is tested
- The performance of the software decreases over the time if there is enormous amount of data
- Test cases are derived from design of documents
- Test data is generated from a test data generator
- Test data need not be logically correct to assess the system’s performance
The difference between the volume testing and load testing:
Volume testing is performed on the varying data volumes in database and load testing is performed with varying number of users.
The benefits of volume testing are
- By identifying the load issues a lot of money can be saved for application maintenance
- It helps for quicker start for scalability plans
- Easy to identify problems
- It confirms the usability of the system in real world
Volume testing
Questions
- What is volume testing? Explain with the examples
- What is the difference between the volume testing and performance testing?