Performance Testing Types

Performance Testing types are:

• load testing
• stress testing
• endurance testing
• spike testing

- Load Testing
This is the simplest form of performance testing. A load test is usually conducted to understand the behavior of the application under a specific expected load. This load can be the expected concurrent number of users on the application performing a specific number of transaction within the set duration. This test will give out the response times of all the important business critical transactions. If the database, application server, etc are also monitored, then this simple test can itself point towards the bottleneck in the application.

- Stress Testing
This testing is normally used to break the application. Double the number of users are added to the application and the test is run again until the application breaks down. This kind of test is done to determine the application's robustness in times of extreme load and helps application administrators to determine if the application will perform sufficiently if the current load goes well above the expected load.

- Endurance Testing (Soak Testing)
This test is usually done to determine if the application can sustain the continuous expected load. Generally this test is done to determine if there are any memory leaks in the application.

- Spike Testing
Spike testing, as the name suggests is done by spiking the number of users and understanding the behavior of the application whether it will go down or will it be able to handle dramatic changes in load.