Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Difference between load and stress testing


Load testing is to test that if the application works fine with the loads that result from large number of simultaneous users, transactions and to determine whether it can handle peak usage periods.

Stress testing is a form of testing which is used to determine the stability of a given system or entity. It involves testing beyond normal operational capacity, often to a breaking point, in order to observe the results. For example, a web server may be stress tested using scripts, bots, and various denials of service tools to observe the performance of a web site during peak loads. Stress testing a subset of load testing.

 Performance testing:
Web application should sustain to heavy load. Web performance testing should include:
Web Load Testing
Web Stress Testing
Test application performance on different internet connection speed.
In web load testing test if many users are accessing or requesting the same page. Can system sustain in peak load times? Site should handle many simultaneous user requests, large input data from users, Simultaneous connection to DB, heavy load on specific pages etc.
Stress testing: Generally stress means stretching the system beyond its specification limits. Web stress testing is performed to break the site by giving stress and checked how system reacts to stress and how system recovers from crashes.
Stress is generally given on input fields, login and sign up areas.
In web performance testing web site functionality on different operating systems, different hardware platforms is checked for software, hardware memory leakage errors,