The real-time scenario of software design and development is lot more complicated for many reasons. The last minute changes in the system functionality, rapid modification in technical environment and continuous requirement for bug fixing are the evident parts of software development life cycle. All these inadvertent side effects lead to the requirement of testing the performance of the software or web application.
In our day to day life we must have experienced difficulties while buying something from eCommerce site? It happens quite often that the payment confirmation takes lot of time. This is quite annoying from the customers’ perspective.
Microsoft Office Share Point Server has maximum capacity of concurrent users with an average page duration time. The cluster of SharePoint servers and SQL servers is capable of serving only certain number of pages per unit time. But when huge number of users view these pages simultaneously, the page loading time becomes much slower than what was actually expected. The main concern in these cases is the slow loading time of pages, which affects the performance of the site. This is where performance testing comes in use to optimize the site’s performance with anticipated limit.
The customers are always expected to be at the center of every business, which is why the business owners aim at customer satisfaction in every possible way. A positive feedback from the customer can enhance your brand value in the market. From marketing to support, there are several opportunities for you to come in direct contact with the customers. If you are into software business, delivering the product within the assured time-frame is not sufficient; rather you have to concentrate on the quality of the product. Performance testing is the key to address the challenges of product development and to ensure its superior quality. Proper performance testing can be counted as a high-impact strategy for your business to optimize customer satisfaction.
Performance testing is conducted to determine how a system is performing in terms of responsiveness. For example, poor search algorithms can cause inefficiencies in software application level, which can be detected by appropriate performance testing. It is also used to measure the stability of a system under particular workload. This kind of testing validates and verify different attributes of a software system, such as resource usage, scalability and reliability. Performance testing can be categorized into different classes, as mentioned below:
Load testing: This simplest form of performance testing is conducted to measure the ability of a system to withstand a specific amount of load. Load testing finds out the bottlenecks of the application software, database and others. This test also points out the response times for all critical software systems.
Stress testing: This is used to understand the maximum limit of capacity within a system. In order to conduct such tests, the loads on a system are progressively increased until the performance of the system degrades below a certain level. Stress testing is able to find out the limit of load that a system can support.
Soak testing / Stability testing: This type of testing is also known as endurance testing, as it is performed to find out whether the system can sustain the expected volume of load or not. The load is applied for an extended period of time to expose how the system behaves when being continuously used for a considerable period of time.
Volume testing: In this type of testing the volume of data is set to a realistic and pre-agreed level to find out the optimum limit of data volume for better performance.
Spike testing: This is performed by suddenly increasing the number of load to a very large volume and observing the reaction of the system. The aim of this testing is to find out whether the system is able to withstand the dramatic change of load or not.
Isolation testing: This is just the repeated execution of performance testing, used to find out the fault domain and confirm it in isolation.
Configuration testing: In this test, the configurations of different system components are changed for measuring the impact on performance.
In general, the performance testing is the combination of one or more of these above-mentioned types. The tests aim at achieving optimum performance of a system, finding best implementation strategies, determining application issues and identifying proper approaches to obtain the highest benefit from the testing procedure.
Software systems used for different business purposes encounter many challenges while they run in real-time. Inadequately tested software applications often fail to perform under stress. This might cause dissatisfaction of the customers, leading to loss of business. A single instance of inaccessibility of web applications or poor performance of the software system might result in huge amount of revenue loss. Performance testing is mandatory for preventing any undesirable situation during the actual performance of the software. In order to run your business successfully and fulfill the demands of your customers, the software systems or web applications must perform as expected. An end-to-end performance testing can mitigate all complexities to enhance the user experience of your customers.
Summary: Performance testing is necessary to check the real time performance of a software. It also measures how a software system behaves under increased volume of load. An end-to-end performance testing can effectively enhance customers’ experience.