Organizations determine various performance-level benchmarks for systems, transactions, infrastructure, and applications. They understand that minimized time for page loading, lower response time, and seamless navigation can more deeply satisfy customers. But there is so much that goes on beneath to maintain the level of performance. One of the key pre-requisites for launching a software application is to check the page performance concerning speed, scalability, and stability under high traffic conditions.

In extreme scenarios like high user-traffic hours, the organization must maintain the page loading speed, application sustainability and stability of their applications. Because even a stable website or app can experience performance failure or crash during extreme loads. Such fails may occur due to ineffective processing, memory over-utilization, poor network, or lower data transfer rates. Hence, performance testing is a critical step that can yield positive business outcomes and offer a seamless user experience.

Types of Performance Testing

Performance testing is conducted to check if the application is performing flawlessly under all load conditions, and not performed to identify bugs. It is used to check the speed, scalability, sustainability, and stability of the application. Here are the different types of performance testing you can run under different conditions.

Load Testing

Load testing is used to test the system performance for a constantly increasing number of end-users until it reaches its threshold value. Load testing is performed to determine the response time, identify the threshold value, and measure data input rates. With these data, we can determine the point at which the application breaks and can fix the load issues before launching the product.

With the evolving digital trends, the number of digital users is also constantly increasing. It becomes essential for organizations to test real-world load scenarios to ensure the application works well even under peak visitor hours. It is also performed at the hardware and software level to measure the systems’ ability to scale up and down with a request in the number of users and other similar parameters for measuring system performance. This aspect is also referred to as scalability testing.

Advantages of load testing:

• Load testing can determine the operating capacity of the application and scale up to maximum under heavy user load determining end-user experience
• Load test gives an idea of the real-world user scenario and helps to fix any performance-related issues before the application is being launched.
• Application downtime can leave end-users frustrated, which may even lead to losing them. Load testing helps find a solution to these real-life scenarios.
• Helps in taking advanced corrective measures and solving the issues for better scalability
• Load testing helps to identify the performance concerns before the product launch; hence, it saves costs arising due to post-launch failures.
• Determine the limitations like response time, network, CPU usage and more for the web application under test
• Identifies the root cause of various application performance issues
• Helps in the tracking of effective tool utilization

Soak Testing

Soak testing, also known as endurance testing, is performed to identify the continuous load an AUT (application under test) can withstand within the determined time. It is used to determine the response time and stability and check how well it performs under heavy load for a pre-determined period.

Advantages of soak testing:

• Determines the application suitability under a certain environment
• Determines if the system is sustainable and capable of running overtime
• Detects errors and bugs that go unnoticed during other performance tests
• Detects performance decline due to high and continuous performance load
• Helps in improving the performance issues and monitor overall application health
• Improves infrastructure requirements of customers with the help of test results

Stress Testing

Stress testing is a form of intensive testing that can determine system stability while testing its performance beyond standard capacity. Stress testing is used to analyze the system behavior after failure; hence, it is also called recoverability testing.

Advantages of stress testing:

• It is used to determine the threshold limit, i.e., the safe usage limit
• It is used to determine the recoverability after a system failure
• It is used to confirm if the intended specifications are met
• It is used to determine the system stability

Spike Testing

Spike testing is done to test the application for unplanned and unpredicted increment and decrement of load. In this testing, the system is loaded and unloaded unexpectedly. In spike testing, the systems are tested to check their performance in case of a sudden rise or decrease in the number of users.

Advantages of spike testing:

• It is used to identify the intended load above which the system can perform
• It is used to determine the consequences arising due to unexpected spikes in end-users
• It can avoid application breaking during an unexpected rise in the users beyond maximum levels
• Prepares the system for real-world scenarios
• Prevents the system from crashing

Volume Testing

Volume testing is executed to analyze system performance on the increase of volume of data. Usually, the volume of data is determined at the beginning of a project, but there may be a sudden surge of data. Volume testing, which is also known as flood testing verifies that this undulation data does not hinder the application performance.  

Advantages of volume testing:

• Detect issues at the early stage to improve customer satisfaction with increased stage
• Identify failures arising due to data volume before the users use them and reduce the system maintenance
• Ensure that the data are stored in the correct format, also prevent loss of data while updating a large amount of data
• Prepares the system regarding the data volume
• Identify high volume system data areas that reduce system response time
• Ensure that the system works effectively in the real world with a high volume of data
• Test the system capacity concerning data volume
• Reduces the overall risk of system performance failures

Failover Testing

Failover testing is performed to verify the capacity of the system to assign extra resources and provide a system backup for operation in case of server failure for any reason. Failover testing focuses on critical applications only rather than disrupting the full stack.

Advantages of failover testing:

• Prepares computer to run mission-critical programs
• Switch easily to system backup when the primary system fails with continuous performance
• Helps in business continuity while the IT team resolves the issue

Following are a few more testing methodologies for an extensive performance testing process

1. Availability testing

Availability Testing is conducted to collect failure events and repair times for an application over a period. It helps compare the availability percentage of server backup based on the service-level agreement.

• Configuration Testing

Configuration Testing is conducted to validate the software application with various combinations of hardware and software to determine the functional requirements. It helps find the optimal configuration under which the software application performs without flaws.

• Testing System Resilience

Testing system resilience is critical as it validates that the systems have the capability to absorb the impact of the problems while recovering from the issues to maintain an acceptable level of performance.

• Performance Compatibility Testing

Performance capability testing is conducted to evaluate the performance of the system across different browsers, databases, operating systems, networks, and hardware.

Performance testing by Yethi

Yethi’s service level agreement is based on the performance level benchmark pre-defined by our clients. To fulfil these benchmarks, we simulate the real-time systems to ensure that your application, transactions, and modules perform at their best even during volume increase, load on systems, different configurations, systems availability, and more. We follow a strategic performance testing framework and validate your system performance against various criteria.

Yethi is a niche QA service partner for global banks and financial institutions that offers efficient end-to-end testing. We analyze different transactions based on the requirements and execute testing for applications-under-test and servers-under-test. From test creation for end-users to monitoring key performance indicators and execution of performance testing, Yethi carries out all aspects of functional and non-function testing with nearly 100% accuracy.