Web Performance Testing: A Introduction to Load Testing

We’ve all been in situations when using software where everything is operating too slowly. You click on a button and nothing is happening except a loader animation spinning to get a seemingly infinite moment.

The worst case is when end users confront this type of issue. These are due to performance problems, and the only way this can be removed is through performance testing.

What is Web Performance Testing?

Performance testing is a form of software testing that focuses on the performance of a system under a particular load. It does not detect bugs, but generates analytics based on benchmarks and gives the programmer all of the diagnostic information they need to get and eliminate performance issues and bottlenecks.

Different types of Web Performance Testing

To obtain a comprehension of the way the program runs on the machine of a user, four different kinds of non-functional performance testing have been implemented during the testing phase.

Load Testing

This sort of web performance testing is performed to diagnose the system’s behavior once the workload is increasing.

Stress Testing

Stress testing is conducted to figure out how the application is working as soon as the machine is just at the boundary or already exceeding its workload capability.

Endurance Testing

This sort of testing finds out how the system is performing when continuously operated below a specific workload.

Spike testing produces a diagnostic report of a system’s performance when the workload is increased suddenly at an elevated level.

In the following article, we will focus on load testing:

Why Load testing is needed

Many popular sites that are extraordinarily well-developed and well-maintained suffer from severe downtime issues once the network traffic raises all of a sudden.

Load testing provides the developer and website owner confidence in their system’s performance and reliability. It also will help to detect the bottleneck by virtually creating a test situation involving increased network traffic before it actually happens in a production environment. It also provides complimentary strategies to take care of performance management and tracks the program running in the manufacturing environment.

Prerequisites and Environments for Load Testing

Good hardware and software configuration are needed to run load testing. A hardware platform should be well-configured with host machines, memory, chips, and disks with high storage capacity, correctly configured load machines and community. Software configuration is not as complicated. Server applications and operating systems will do the job.

The main measuring parameter of load testing is that the system’s response period. Before the testing begins, you should gather the understanding regarding whether the reaction time is already measured, whether it is applicable to some business process, while it is achievable and justifiable and if it can be quantified using a stopwatch or a tool.

Load Testing Life Cycle

The following process briefly explains how load testing is carried out.

First, a dedicated test environment is made.

Load testing situations are to be determined following.

Each load testing situation should include appropriate maintenance of diagnostic information, a predictable number of customers who will be accessing the system, link rate of the networks to be used by end-user, server configurations and finally, operating systems and browsers to be used by the end-user.

The tester starts running the test cases and following appropriate observation, gathers all of the metrics.

The results are then examined and procedures for operation improvement are advised.

The system is fine-tuned and the test cases are implemented again

Popular Load Testing Tools

Apart from manual loading testing, tools are utilized that may automate the process. Load testing tools may be developed in house, and some open-source tools are available that may be used if your budget is reduced. Apart from that, enterprise load testing applications are available which support multiple protocols and can simulate a huge number of users.

NeoLoad

NeoLoad is an enterprise-grade testing tool made mainly for DevOps and Agile methodology. It provides the consumer with an automatic layout of test case scenarios, together with automatic maintenance and continuous analysis of information. NeoLoad can also be easily incorporated with all the testing ecosystem. It can be readily installed on servers like Jenkins and used together with functional tools such as Selenium.

LoadView

LoadView is a cloud-based platform that offers total flexibility to the tester. It can test web APIs like SOAP, REST, and JSON with web servers and generates a string of getting and POST requests. In addition, it can stimulate user behavior on critical functionalities such as login, form submits, etc.. The application is fully director of a cloud and readily available for a free trial.

Challenges in Load Testing

Regardless of its multiple pros, certain disadvantages are present as well. First of all, proper programming knowledge must operate load testing tools. Second, the tools can be somewhat pricey since the pricing is contingent on the number of virtual users the tool can encourage.

It can be said that performance testing is a compulsory phase before a program is deployed in the production environment. Particularly in regards to solving bottlenecks and creating the application stable and scalable, load testing is also an important web performance testing process that may help to detect the maximum functioning capacity of the program.