#application load testing

The latest software applications need to be compatible across a plethora of digital platforms. These include devices, operating systems, browsers, frameworks, third-party APIs, and networks. However, the success of such applications can only be ensured if they are able to function seamlessly across the above-mentioned digital elements or channels for peak load conditions. In other words, the applications should perform accurately and without any issues (latency, downtime, etc) should they be subjected to specific load patterns. However, to ensure the software performs to its optimum capacity when faced with extreme loads, it should undergo load testing.

What is load testing?

As non-functional testing, it is carried out to find out the behavior of a software application under specific load threshold. A software application load testing helps to determine a system’s behavior during normal and peak traffic conditions. For example, during Black Friday sales in the West, people throng retail or eCommerce stores in droves. And unless these systems have undergone load testing, they can get overwhelmed leading to system latency, downtime, or worse, crashes. This type of application performance testing is meant to check an application’s performance in the event of a large number of users trying to access it at the same time.

 What does application load testing tell us?

The following outcomes can be determined by subjecting an application to load testing.

·       Identify if the hosting infrastructure is sufficient to run the application.

·       Find if the application is able to perform to its optimum when subjected to its peak user load.

·       Verify the number of simultaneous users the application can handle. Also, evaluate the hardware configuration, network capacity, and other considerations the application may require to function optimally.

·       Identify the specific element in the application that is causing the deterioration in performance. For example, in the event of an increase in user count, the testing would throw light on the quantum of memory and processor usage, and response time for network bandwidth.

Benefits of load performance testing

To ensure software applications perform to their optimum when maximum number of users try to access them at the same time, they should undergo rigorous load testing. The benefits to accrue from such a type of performance testing include:

Stimulation of real-time user scenarios: It is important to know how an application, website, or API shall behave when accessed by a large number of users at a given point in time. It is needed to prevent situations like system latency, downtime, or crashes, which have the potential to mar customer experience and confidence. Simulating real user scenarios can help in identifying bugs or understanding bottlenecks that may impact the application when put to real use.

Measurement of the quality of product or service: Application performance testing measures the quality of a product or service as per the user behavior. Testers using tools like LoadRunner, Blitz, BlazeMeter, CloudTest, and Apache JMeter evaluate an app or website’s performance under actual load conditions. Also, the testing exercise monitors the throughput of servers, memory, CPU, and other hardware elements when subjected to extreme load thresholds.

Analysis of key performance parameters: Testers, through application load testing, can identify a slew of performance parameters. These include throughput, response time per transaction, delay in network between server response and client request, or design issues. Further, configuration issues like database server, application server, web server, memory limitation, and CPU maximization are identified.

Improved scalability: This type of performance testing helps testers to find out the actual quantum of load that an application, web portal, or server can support. The information can be of great help when developers need to scale up the infrastructure as per the changing business demand. Besides, in order to preempt special load scenarios like Black Friday, music festivals, or sporting events witnessing a surge in traffic, testers can perform special load testing.

Prevention of application failure: Any application may contain a hidden glitch, which, if not identified and mitigated in time, can lead to its failure. Such failures can manifest themselves when the load is beyond the capacity of the application to handle. This is where load testing can help by detecting such issues early on in the SDLC. If not, such failures can incur huge costs for organizations and impact their brands adversely.

Conclusion

Software testing is an essential part of the SDLC involving software development and deployment as well. The reason for testing software is to ensure it operates as per the required parameters and is shorn of any bug, which could otherwise impact its functioning. Moreover, any comprehensive testing of the software ensures the end-user is fully satisfied with its performance. It also allows testers to accurately check the performance of the software and find its optimum performance range. Broadly speaking, there are mainly three types of performance checks that testers can use on any software, namely, load testing, stress testing, and performance testing.

Load testing: This type of testing is done to figure out the number of users a software system can handle effortlessly. Here, various components of the software system are checked individually to find their performance in different scenarios. For example, you can put loads of users or products to check the performance of the homepage or checkout page of an e-commerce portal. There are many automated tools available in the market like WAPT or LoadRunner to execute application load testing.

The main goal of load testing is to find out the largest job a software system can handle. During load testing, various attributes such as server throughput, the highest performance level, response time under different loads, the number of users the application can handle, the adequacy of the H/W environment, and so on are tested.

The testers use this type of testing to figure out load balancing problems, bandwidth issues, memory leaks, memory management, and the upper limit of all the components of an application. One example of load testing is checking the mail server of a system that has a huge number of concurrent users. This type of testing tells about the number of concurrent users the software can support and whether there is any need to scale the software to ensure its accessibility without adversely affecting its performance.

Stress testing: Stress testing allows testers to ascertain the stability as well as the robustness of the system. It is primarily non-functional testing that uses auto-generated models to simulate various hypothetical situations.

The main goal of this testing is to find out how the system will behave when it faces extreme loads and how to recover should there be any failure. The QA experts use this test to ensure the server does not crash if the system is subjected to a sudden high load. At the same time, it maintains the stability of the system and optimizes its response time.

In stress testing, the quantum of the load is put above the threshold of a breakpoint. One example of stress testing is to shut down a system and then restart the ports of a larger network to find out whether the system has saved the data before crashing.  

Performance Testing: Performance testing figures out the speed of the computer as well as the network on which the software or an application will run.

This type of testing is done mainly to validate the performance of all the components of a system. Here, the software is put under different load scenarios and checked for the performance of its components for different parameters. This testing is very important as it sets the performance benchmark for any software. Moreover, here, the features of software like resource usage and reliability are checked.

Unlike in load and stress testing, the load limit in performance testing is kept below as well as above the breakpoint. This is done to find out the range within which the software can perform optimally.

Performance application testing can be executed by checking the HTTP connections, the suitable response time, and so on. It validates the optimum performance of an application and checks whether it conforms to the performance needs of the business. It also allows testers to find any performance issues, so that they (along with the developers) can analyze them thoroughly and find an appropriate solution. It also validates whether the hardware of the system is adequate to handle the high load.

Conclusion: The testing of software prior to its deployment in the market is essential to ensure it performs flawlessly even when subjected to severe loads. In a dynamically changing the market with shifting customer preferences, performance, load and stress testing have become important to validate the robustness and consistency of software.

 Author Bio:

Oliver has been associated with Cigniti Technologies Ltd as an Associate Manager - Content Marketing, with over 10 years of industry experience as a Content Writer in Software Testing & Quality Assurance industry. Cigniti is a Global Leader in Independent Quality Engineering & Software Testing Services with CMMI-SVC v1.3, Maturity Level 5.

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We’re always collecting feedback and we take it very seriously.  One common thing we hear from our users is the confusion of how our existing test types are named and work.  We’ll admit our naming flat out stinks, and more importantly we assumed everyone…