Load Testing and its Importance in System Development

When software is about completion, it must have gone through many application tests, most especially through the tests in the environment where development and testing happen concomitantly. However, the number of tests you run a software do not matter, once you are almost done with the app-development stage, there is just one way to ascertain whether your software will meet the user demand or not. This process is called load testing, and the load testing tool is the best object to use. Load testing enables the software developer to subject the system to a simulated user demand to test its behavior under special conditions.

Load testing is also the process of subjecting a computing device or software system to measure its performance capacity. This function I designed to govern a system’s performance in optimal conditions. It is used in identifying the maximum operating ability of a system as well as its degradation element and bottlenecks. Stress testing is defined as the process when the extreme load is placed on a system to determine its patterns during peak loads. The only expected results due to the significant load is an error. However, there is no marking boundary when a load test graduates to become system test.

Concurrency testing is used in conjunction with load testing, reliability testing, software performance testing, and volume testing. These are non-functional testing types that are used to estimate stability in a system or software.

This term has different meanings to many software testing professional communities. However, in general terms, it refers to the exercise of simulating the expected usage of a system by modelling different users retrieving the software concomitantly. As such, load testing is beneficial to multi-user software systems; especially the client-server system including the web servers. However, many other types of systems require load testing. For instance, a graphics editor or a word processor can be enforced to retrieve a large document, or a commercial package can be obligated to generate numerous reports of data. The actual use is simulated with load testing as opposed to using the analytical or theoretical modelling.

Performance and load testing is used in analyzing a multi-user system by subjecting it to live and virtual users while measuring its performance under different loads. Performance and load testing is conducted in an environment indistinguishable with live usage before it is released to the masses.

If you’re looking to learn more about load testing, check out some of these resources:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182590(VS.110).aspx
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-apache-jmeter-to-perform-load-testing-on-a-web-server
https://www.loadview-testing.com