Overview of Performance Testing

Software Testing is the part of a software development life cycle that checks whether the developed software needs all the requirements. If there is a defect, the software is sent back to the development team to resolve the errors and make the software perfect. It is a critical stage in software development because it helps find the bugs and get them fixed before the software’s final delivery. Performance testing is a type of software testing that does not focus on finding the defects but checks the software’s performance under a specific load. It helps to determine how the software will perform under increased pressure. Also, it determines the software stability and responsiveness with increased capacity.

Types of performance testing for software

There are different types of performance testing that help to determine how the software responds under different conditions. It is a non-functional form of testing that helps determine if the system is ready to be delivered. Below are the types of performance testing:

Load Testing: Load Testing measures the performance of the software when the workload gets increased. It tests the software behavior for both normal as well as peak workload conditions. Also, it helps to know the maximum operating capacity of an application.
Stress Testing: Stress Testing is performed to determine the maximum workload when the system breaks. It gets done to verify the system on its robustness and find its error handling capabilities, in case of a high workload.
Spike Testing: Spike Testing is the type of performance testing, in which the application is tested by quickly increasing and decreasing the workload repeatedly. This is performed to determine the recovery time, when the load changes suddenly, and find the application’s weakness.
Endurance Testing: Endurance Testing is a type of performance testing, in which the application gets tested with a usual workload, but for the extended period. It gets performed to ensure that the user can handle the extended load without affecting the response time and find how the application behaves under sustained usage.
Scalability Testing: Scalability Testing is a type of performance testing that gets done to test if the software can handle the continuously increasing workload. It gets performed to determine how the application scales up while increasing workload.
Volume Testing: Volume Testing tests the software when the large volume of data gets projected. It is also called flood testing that determines the system’s performance with increased data in the database.

Common Performance Problems

Most of the performance-related problems are about speed, load time, scalability, and response time. If any of these factors is missing, then the business may lose many potential users. Therefore, the Testing gets done, so that it runs fast and handles enough user-load. Below are some of the Performance-related problems:

Long Load Time: Load Time is the time taken by the application to get the load in the beginning. It is kept very less, so that application opens fast.
Weak Response Time: Response Time is the time taken by the application to respond to user action. This is also kept very less so that the application responds fast. Otherwise, the user may lose interest.
Poor Scalability: The application has poor scalability when it is not able to handle enough number of users. Therefore, Load Testing is performed, so that the application does not break, with increased user-load.

Importance of Performance Testing

When we do not perform the Performance Testing before the delivery of the websites or applications, the clients may lose users and spend money to fix the performance-related issues. Therefore, the below factors should get considered before delivering the product to the client.

Spike user loads
System response time
Optimize performance
Unexpected load conditions
Throughput level
System scalability
System stability

Performance Testing Tools

There are many tools that you can use depending upon the factors such as License, Supported Platform, Hardware Requirements, etc. Below are commonly used performance Testing Tools:

HP LoadRunner: It tests applications by simulating a large number of users and putting real-life load.
JMeter: It gets used to performing Load Testing on applications and web servers.
LoadNinja: It is a cloud-based tool, used to perform Load Testing by recording and playing back the load tests.

NeoLoad: NeoLoad is a Tool, designed basically for DevOps that tests 10 times faster than traditional Tools.