What is load testing in QA?

What is Load testing?

It is a testing method that ascertains a system or application’s behavior under both normal and peak load conditions. The system is tested by steadily and constantly increasing the system load until the time it reaches the threshold limit. Automation tools such as JMeter, LoadUI and LoadRunner can be easily employed using this testing method.

The strategic need for Load testing:

The maximum amount of work a system or application can handle is defined by the load testing method to ascertain the system’s ability to handle work without degradation of performance. The upper limit of the entire application component like hardware, database and network etc., are determined so that the anticipated load in the future can be properly managed.

When massive traffic volumes hit extremely popular sites, they had to suffer downtimes and this is simply because the organizations had not put in strategic efforts to implement load testing. To achieve optimal system and application performance, especially in scenarios where there are a colossal number of users, load testing needs to be performed.

Following are a few reasons that justify the need to conduct load testing:

·       This testing method improves the performance, reliability, and confidence of the system or application

·       The bottlenecks in the system are identified under heavy user stress scenarios

·      Protection against poor performance is provided and it also accommodates complementary strategies for monitoring the production environment and performance management

 Load testing example:

For example, consider a shopping cart application that is required to support at least 100 concurrent users. The methodology is described as follows:

·       25 Virtual users will log in, return previously purchased items and then log off

·       25 Virtual users will log in, add the specific items of their interest in the shopping cart, check out and then log off

·       25 Virtual items will just log in to browse through all the items to know what are all the items available and then log off

·       25 Virtual users will log in, but, do not undertake any specific activity.

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