In the 90s, the video game Need for Speed showed that a fast response time is critical for usability. Websites or apps should be built with speed in mind so that users have a great user experience. The modern IT era has seen tremendous development in software testing and inevitably greener pastures. Therefore, it is essential to ensure the adequate performance of the software.
Performance testing method ensures the application performs well under the workload.
Imagine a browser that takes 30 seconds to render a web page or a streaming platform that perfectly displays a video but loses connection every three minutes. The software’s functionality works, but more than such, performance is needed for a real user. Building fully functional software is essential, but its performance is an equally important challenge.
The purpose of performance testing is to remove performance bottlenecks. Common bottlenecks are CPU Utilization, Memory Utilization, Network Utilization, Software Limitations, and Disk Utilization. Understanding the most common causes of bottlenecks is essential to avoid them.
CPU Utilization: Occurs when the processor cannot fulfill the requested requests. Too many processing requests can overload and slow down the system. The CPU is likely to blame for most performance bottlenecks. We can increase CPU power by adding more RAM and improving software coding efficiency to resolve these issues.
Memory Utilization: A memory bottleneck would arise without enough RAM, even though you use a powerful CPU for servers. RAM holds data and makes it accessible to the processor. The RAM resources of the server system determine the number of processes your CPU can perform.
Network Utilization: Network bottlenecks occur when the data transfer between two devices needs more bandwidth or processing power to complete a task quickly. A bottleneck restricts the flow of data on a network. This often results in blocked web pages or slow data transfer, leaving end users frustrated and tempted to take their business elsewhere. Network bottlenecks can be avoided or resolved by upgrading or adding servers or upgrading network equipment such as routers and hubs.
Software Limitations: Sometimes, bottlenecks originate from the software itself.If you build your application using a framework or program that may not be written to work and utilize multiple CPU streams. They only utilize a single-core processor instead of a multicore processor or additional RAM. These problems are solved by rewriting and repairing the software. Clean and efficient code is essential to an open process. If the code executes quickly and efficiently, the application is reliable, and the end users are happy.
Disk Utilization: A disk usage bottleneck is likely due to a problem related to the physical size of the disk or how fast data is being read from or written to the disk. Long-term storage, including hybrid hard drive (HHD) and solid-state drive (SSD). Even the most immediate long-term storage solutions have physical speed limits, making this bottleneck one of the most difficult to troubleshoot. The bottleneck can be solved by switching to SSD, and disk access speed can be improved by reducing fragmentation problems and increasing data cache speed. There are several different types of performance testing available. The type of performance testing will vary depending on the organization\’s methodology.
Performance Testing Types
These are significant types of performance testing.
Load Testing: Validates the application’s ability to deliver high performance under the expected user load. The goal is to identify performance bottlenecks before deploying software.
Volume Testing: This test evaluates the applicant’s ability to process large amounts of data. The impact on response time and application behavior is analyzed. This testing can be used to identify bottlenecks and determine system capacity. This type of performance testing is essential for big data applications. This test is also known as flood testing.
Stress Testing: Test your application under extreme workloads to see how it handles high traffic and data processing. The goal is to identify a breakpoint in the application.
Endurance Testing: Evaluates the software and ensures it can withstand the expected load over a long period. This is done by applying different hurdles to the application under test over a more extended period. Durability testing can be considered a part of stress testing and is also known as immersion testing.
Spike Testing: Tests the software’s response to sudden large spikes in load caused by users. This testing is essential for applications that significantly increase the number of users. The goal is to determine if performance suffers, if the system fails, or if it can handle dramatic changes in load.
Scalability Testing: Determines your application’s ability to handle increasing load and processing. This includes measurement attributes, including response time, throughput, hits and requests per second, transaction processing speed, CPU usage, network usage, and more. The results of this testing can be used in the development planning and design phase, reducing costs and potential performance problems. This helps in planning to increase the capacity of the software system.
The critical step in ensuring software quality is performance testing, but unfortunately, it is often seen as an afterthought. First, we need to understand the performance testing objectives and how metrics can help understand the business needs.
Performance testing objectives include evaluating application performance, processing speed, transfer rate, network bandwidth usage, maximum concurrent users, memory usage, workload efficiency, and command response time.
This non-functional software testing technique determines how an application’s stability, scalability, and responsiveness will withstand heavy workloads.
Performance Testing Metrics
It is imperative to measure performance testing metrics to ensure the smooth operation of applications/websites. Metric parameters are collected during performance testing processes. These metrics help the Trigents team identify critical software areas that need more attention or improvement and determine the success of applications or website operations.
Performance testing metrics, or key performance indicators (KPIs), define businesses’ performance test effectiveness. It is also essential to track the performance of your Quality Assurance team and the efficiency of your Quality Assurance strategy.
Below is the list of performance testing metrics that need to be tracked based on universal parameters like core features of the software, type of software, and business goals.
Memory utilization: Measures the utilization of the memory needed to process the request.
CPU utilization: Evaluates the percentage of the central processing unit (CPU) utilized in processing the requests at a given time.
Error rate: The percentage of requests resulting in errors compared to the total number of requests.
Average load time: Measures a webpage’s average time to complete the loading process and appear on the user screen.
Wait time: Indicates how much time a request spends in a queue before getting processed. This metric is also called average latency.
Response time: Measures total time between sending the request and receiving the response.
Requests per second: Refer to the total number of requests processed/handled by the application. This metric will provide the requests per second (RPS) data.
Throughput: Measures the number of transactions an application can handle in a second. It is the amount of bandwidth used during the test.
Performance testing metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) also show the current performance of the application, network, and infrastructure. With the help of performance test results, we can compare and analyze the effect of code changes. These KPIs will determine the success of the whole performance testing process.
Measure Performance Testing With Trigent:
At Trigent, we have all the tools and processes you need to ensure your application runs smoothly. We guarantee the performance of an application on different networks with different user loads, bandwidth, etc., with the help of different types of performance testing. With years of expertise in quality engineering and performance testing, Trigent can help you quickly get started and save time, cost, and resources, by reusing the test cases and analyzing the results. In Trigent, we provide various metrics based on the business outcomes it helps to measure. By measuring performance testing metrics, you can avoid costly downtime during peak usage and ensure the best user experience. Trigent can make the whole process easier and better from start to finish.
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