Major Types of Performance Testing and Why They Matter!

Stress Testing

Stress testing evaluates an application’s performance characteristics. It exposes the application to conditions that are not defined during development. Tester conducts such tests to determine the system’s largest load capacity before it crashes. This form of testing involves pushing an application above its usual load limits to see which components fail.

Load Testing

Load testing checks an application’s performance in high traffic. Heavy load, or as we say, an increased number of users, is applied to the software during the tests. And the results are measured to see if the app fulfills all the requirements.

Load is defined as the expected number of concurrent users on the application performing a given number of transactions within a specified time frame. If other components such as the database and application server are checked, this simple test might also show other problems in the application software.

Endurance Testing

Endurance testing evaluates an application under load for a longer duration. This verifies the performance requirements related to production loads and their durations. Applications are subjected to endurance tests by applying various loads over a prolonged length of time. The program must be able to withstand a higher load without decreasing reaction times.

Spike Testing

Spike testing checks the way an application handles a sudden rise in volume. The increase in volume occurs with a sudden rise in the load generated by many users. This sort of performance testing is done to see how the system will manage a sudden increase in load and if it will fail or not.

Companies that look forward to experiencing many users can take advantage of spike testing. E.g., customer service, medical emergencies, etc.

Volume Testing

Another name for volume testing is flood testing. The goal of volume testing is to check the performance of the application is not affected when exposed to high volumes of data. This testing focuses on application response time and application behavior.

The purpose of volume testing is to identify obstacles and assess the system’s capabilities. Big data applications need such evaluation.

Scalability testing

Scalability testing is conducted to verify whether your application can manage rising loads and processing. The test helps measure response time, throughput, requests per second, Network usage, etc.

Another goal for scalability testing is to check if the server can cope or crash under a heavy load. The results of this testing can be incorporated in the planning and design phases of development, lowering costs and reducing the risk of performance problems.

Page Speed

Users get attracted to a smooth-going process. For that, they expect the pages to load quickly. Users may get annoyed and lose trust if the website malfunctions. It also creates problems if the system takes an eternity to load, leading to an unpleasant experience. The faster the website is, the better its performance will be. To keep customers on your site and away from your competitors, it’s essential to have a fast load time because everything on the internet is just a click away.

Scalability

Along with good speed, scalability is also an essential factor for application performance. Your app’s scalability refers to its ability to handle an increasing number of customers, clients, or users. If there are problems with the program, adding new features will result in a deadlock.

The scalability of your application positively impacts your users as the app can handle the traffic surges, which helps in achieving a higher rate of interest from your application.

Stability

None of the companies want their applications to crash, especially at a crucial moment. As it can cost them a fortune as well as lose their customers. E.g., if there is a gaming tournament going on, the gaming company cannot afford the app to crash in the middle of the game. In such scenarios, stress testing is essential. It is vital to get the idea of how many users your app can handle before it crashes.

Apache JMeter

Apache JMeter is a java-based open-source tool for testing Web applications. It has recently been updated to incorporate additional test functions. The tool examines and evaluates an application’s performance in a variety of ways. In comparison to other tools, it takes less time to script. Apache JMeter tool can be used to assess the performance of static and dynamic resources and Web dynamic applications.

The tool is used to simulate a heavy demand on a server, a set of servers, a network, or an object to test its strength or examine overall performance under various load types.

LoadNinja

This tool allows scriptless tests. These scripts are large, difficult to comprehend, and need a dynamic correlation of session status to playback, making load testing a time-consuming and exhausting endeavor. By automating the difficult jobs of dynamic correlation, script translation, and script scrubbing, LoadNinja allows teams to improve test coverage without sacrificing quality.

WebLOAD

WebLOAD is a load testing tool for large organizations. It comes with an integrated development environment (IDE), a load generation console, and an advanced analytic dashboard.

The tool makes flexible test scenarios, a Powerful correlation engine, automated problem detection, and more.

LoadView

DevOps teams can use the tool to stress test their websites, web apps, and APIs with thousands of simultaneous connections in real browsers. That, too, all from a fully managed cloud environment. It generates multi-step scripts that act as if consumers are interacting with your website or application. You can display the actual performance of your applications under load using Dotcom-LoadView Monitor’s tool.

LoadUI Pro

LoadUI Pro can monitor application servers by increasing the pressure on them. This tool helps in the faster design of load tests without scripts and distributing them on-cloud using load. One can make load tests automatic, and you can receive complete reports.