Types of Performance Testing 

Performance testing means quality testing of a product on various measures by establishing the benchmark behavior. It places a strong emphasis on evaluating program output, processing speed, data transfer rate, network bandwidth usage, number of concurrent users at the maximum, memory usage, and workload efficiency. It focuses on evaluating performance benchmarks rather than trying to uncover application flaws. 

Performance Testing is the most important stage in the product development cycle. After a product has been designed and development work is complete, it must meet a number of performance benchmarks. Performance testing is done to locate performance-related bottlenecks, which companies and organizations use to increase performance. Performance testing makes the product ready for commercial release and aids in ensuring its quality. 

Different Types of Performance Testing 

Performance testing is crucial because it provides important information about the scalability, reliability, and durability of the applications under testing. However, developing an effective performance test strategy is difficult since performance testing comprises a range of specialized test types that must be employed in certain ways.  

1. Capacity Testing  

Capacity testing helps organizations to make sure that their application and environment can efficiently manage the greatest number of users or transactions while still meeting the performance standards outlined. The goal of capacity testing is to determine how much traffic systems can handle at their highest capacity while still providing the best possible user experience. 

Capacity testing should not be confused with load testing, which focuses more on putting the environment and application under different loads to see how they respond.  

2. Load Testing 

Load testing is a non-functional software testing procedure, where the program is tested under a predetermined expected load. It determines how the software program functions when several users are using it at once. Before deployment, load testing tries to get rid of performance bottlenecks and ensure that software applications are stable and operate effectively. Load testing is frequently used in software engineering for client/server, web-based applications, including Intranet and Internet applications. 

3. Volume Testing  

In Volume testing, a substantial amount of data is exposed to the software. Flood testing is another name for Volume testing which is used to assess the system’s performance by increasing the amount of data in the database. The impact on response time and system behaviour, when exposed to a huge volume of data, can be evaluated with the use of volume testing.  

Initiating scaling plans more quickly, spotting bottlenecks early, and ensuring that systems can handle real-world use is all possible with volume testing. 

4. Stress Testing  

Software testing known as “stress testing” is used to confirm the dependability and stability of software applications. The purpose of stress testing is to evaluate a piece of software’s robustness and error-handling abilities under conditions of extremely high load and to make sure that it won’t crash under pressure. It even conducts testing that goes beyond typical operational conditions to assess how the software performs in harsh environments. 

Applications under this type of performance testing undergo brief periods of stress to determine their endurance. Finding the breaking point of a system, piece of software or piece of hardware is one of the most common possibilities of stress testing. 

5. Soak Testing  

Soak testing, often referred to as endurance testing, capacity testing, or longevity testing, involves putting a system through its planned load to test it for performance-related problems including stability and response time. To prevent poor performance or system faults, soak testing is primarily used to identify and improve potential issues like memory leaks, resource leaks, or deterioration that could occur over time. The system is next assessed to determine whether it might operate effectively under a heavy load for a prolonged period, monitoring its response and examining its behaviour under prolonged use. The goal of soak testing is to find performance issues that only appear over an extended period of time.  

6. Endurance Testing 

Endurance testing is a non-functional sort of software testing in which software is tested under heavy load for a long period to assess how the software will behave when used continuously. The primary objective of endurance testing is to confirm that the application can handle the greater load without experiencing any response-time degradation. This type of testing is done during the last stage of the performance run cycle.  

The endurance testing process can take several weeks, months, or even a year. Increasing external pressures like user activity or internet traffic may be necessary for this. Due to this, endurance testing is distinct from load testing, which typically takes place for a few hours or less. 

7. Scalability Testing  

Scalability testing tests the ability of a network, system, application, product, or process to fulfil the function when modifications are made in the size or volume of the system to suit a rising need. It is a type of non-functional testing in which the performance of an application is evaluated in terms of its capacity to scale up or scale down the number of user requests, as well as other performance-related factors. It can be done at the database, software, or hardware levels. It guarantees that a software product can handle the planned rise in user traffic, data volume, transaction counts frequency and many other factors. It evaluates how well the system, processes, or databases can accommodate an expanding need. 

8. Spike Testing  

The abrupt rise or fall in traffic is referred to as a “spike.” A type of performance testing called as Spike Testing involves abruptly and drastically changing the load on an application. The objective, here, is to ascertain how a software program will behave under highly variable traffic conditions. Spike testing not only examines the maximum load on an application, but it also confirms the application’s turnaround time between activity spikes. This helps in determining how the system handles sudden changes in the user load. In software engineering, spike testing is used to predict how a system would operate under an unexpectedly high load.