Load Testing

In the last topic we’ve learned about Types of Functional Testing. Now in software testing we will see further types of non-functional testing. The first type is Load Testing. We will see the introduction, one example and why we will use Load Testing. First of all we will see the introduction. Load Testing is a performance testing technique. In this we measure the response of the system in different load conditions. In this, on the system, we will give more pressure or load then the system and then we will test it. Here load means increase the user’s account considerably. With this we will note the maximum capacity of the application. We will keep in mind how much load the application can take. We do the load testing so that we get an idea that in the real world how and where our application will handle so much load. What do we identify with Load Testing? With Load Testing we identify what is the maximum operating capacity of the testing. Suppose we have an application website, or result website. At a time 1000 students are logging in on the result website. What is the particular capacity? If 1200 are there what is the effect? We will see that. Whatever is the current environment on which our website is running, we will see that if it’s infrastructure is changed, does it give any result? Like you must have seen, if you have a 4GB RAM, you are running a game on it, but is the game running? No, it is not running. From 4GB you have made 8GB RAM, your game and your PC is smoothly running. So, these are the things that we mostly see in Load Testing. We will take an example of a Word Processor. In this word document there is size mentioned. 14KB, 18KB, 22KB. In Microsoft Word we put a 1GB file instead of 14KB. Then there will be a particular amount of load. Right? 1GB, 2GB, if we are putting such a big load. So, how will our Microsoft Word respond? Will it crash or it will handle or it will hang. Right? The 2^nd example is that we are running multiple applications on one computer. This everyone must have done. MP3 player is on, game is on and even the internet is on. How is our computer performing these? Why is Load Testing used.? When the system has to deal with a large number of users then we go for Load Testing. Like there is Student Result System, E-commerce website is there. Nowadays you can see that the smartphones that are coming, in them the RAM capacity is increasing. In every phone minimum 2 or 4 GB RAM the company is providing. Why? Because nowadays the load of applications increases as there are so many high-end games that are coming. So, they want a particular amount of infrastructure and particular amount of environment. So, that it performs properly. What is the need of Load Testing? Now that Question arises. We saw why Load Testing is done. Now what is the need of Load Testing? Many times it has happened that a good famous e-commerce website had not done their load testing properly, that is the reason why the sites crashed. If a particular company is not doing its Load Testing, their site can crash that day as there are lots of users coming and there will be a lot of data that will be generated, a lot of traffic will come. With Load Testing we improve our stability of application. What is the level? What is the load’s level that our application can handle? We saw about Load Testing. We saw an example and we saw why Load Testing is used. In the next topic we will see about Stress Testing.