Perfomance testing

Performance Testing

Performance Testing identifies the stability of the application and tests the speed of the product response with different types and intensity of load. The purpose of testing is the identification of the disadvantages and vulnerabilities in the system, identification of the data downloading and processing speed and reliability of the program.

Testing of system parameters can be done using:

• determination of the permissible number of application users;
• measurement of the execution time of a system operation;
• determination of permissible program performance limits with different load levels.

Performance testing can be divided into the following subtypes:

• load testing;
• stress testing;
• stability testing;
• configurational testing.

Load testing

Load Testing – allows to understand whether the application is able to work stably with the load within the permissible limits and slightly exceeding these limits. This testing examines the behavior of the application under high load. The load can be, for example, a certain number of concurrent users of the application in a certain period of time. This type of testing allows you to determine the response time of important business transactions. By observing the database, the application server and the network, you can identify the weak points of the application.

Let us look through the examples of load testing below

Let’s suppose we have an active online store and everyone's favorite holiday – the New Year Day is approaching. In this case, the site needs to withstand the load of numerous users and their orders. For this type of testing, you can use the API, as well as analyze the loading times of the site with a high number of users. In order to do this, you can take the download value on a normal day and compare it with the value with a large number of users.

Let us have an example of load testing a dashboard of a board, on which users place a large stream of information, loading the system. Testing it, there is a necessity to recreate such users and send a huge amount of data and requests to the server.

Configuration testing

Configuration Testing verifies the operation of the software on different operating systems, hardware and software configurations, as well as their compatibility. At this stage of testing, system performance parameters are measured with average and maximum load values. This type of performance testing ensures that the system performs the same on different configurations and operating systems.

A great example of configuration testing can be checking the launch of the site on devices with flagship filling (iPhone 12, Samsung Galaxy S21) and five-year-old accessories (Xiaomi Note 3, Nexus 5), as well as comparing the performance of the site on these platforms. With these checks, you can determine the optimal configuration of the device for comfortable work with the application or site. You can also test the site on mobile (iOS, Android) and desktop (Linux, MacOS, Windows) operating systems.

Stress Testing

Stress Testing – it is a testing of the application behavior under unexpected load changes that exceed the calculated level. This test determines how programs and the system work in non-standard conditions, and also allows you to assess whether the system is able to continue its work after a non-standard situation. Stress can be an increased intensity of operations, which reaches quite high values or an emergency change of the server configuration.

For stress testing, you can take a PC and test its components: processor, RAM, etc. The CPU test uses console commands that load all available cores, for example:

stress-ng --class cpu --sequential 8 --timeout 60s --metrics-brief

Mathematical operations, sorting, encryption, compression, search, string manipulation will be performed.

For RAM tests, you can use console commands, for example:

stress-ng --class memory --sequential 8 --timeout 60s --metrics-brief

You can also use separate software for RAM tests: MemTest, SuperRam, and others. Allocating, copying and memory cleaning operations, compression test and data sorting will be performed.

HDD tests are also carried out using third-party software (Victoria, HDDScan), which allow you to check the durability of the HDD, the presence of bad sectors, perform read/write procedures, find out the speed of the HDD when reading/writing, as well as its temperature at the time of peak load.

Stability testing

Stability Testing is aimed to check how long the application can work stably with an average load level. At the same time, it is necessary to detect memory leaks, incorrect software settings, check the restart of servers under load and other aspects that affect the stable operation of the program. But the time for which operations are performed takes second place in this type of testing.

In order to test stability, Apache Bench can be used. It shows the amount of requests and amount of streams of requests. This test includes: amount of requests per second, average time of performing the test, average time of performing one test. By using the Httperf and its requests, one can identify the connection rate, connection time and request rate.

Perfomance testing can be divided into the following scenarios.

Testing sites, the following points are checked:

• amount of users – what is the amount of requests for the peculiar amount of time;
• response time – the amount of time that is needed to perform the users’ request; 
• requests per second – the amount of requests that are sent to the server by users; 
• transactions per second – the number of transactions sent by users to the server is measured;
• percentage of errors – the percentage of errors in the total number of responses to the user per unit of time is checked;
• processor – it is checked how much the processor is loaded when performing tasks;
• RAM – used MB of physical memory is checked;
• hard disk – disk space usage is checked.

Testing mobile applications, make sure to pay attention to the following checks:

• the process of the same operation of the program in different network conditions;
• searching for various non-reliable application locations that may disrupt application performance;
• whether the application will cope with the required load;
• response time, because it must meet the requirements;
• whether the application works stably with a large number of users;
• operation of the application with an unstable Internet connection;
• client-server configuration that should provide the desired performance.

Game testing also has its own peculiarities:

• games are checked in different settings (minimum, maximum and medium quality mode);
• the average FPS (Frames Per Second) on different settings is measured;
• CPU loading is checked in various game modes (menu, loading, gameplay, etc.);
• RAM loading is checked;
• performance of the game is evaluated;
• the behavior of the system when collapsing\expanding the game with various settings is checked.

Performance testing tools

Also, performance testing uses various tools that make the tester's job easier. Below are some examples of such tools.

LoadView is one of the most effective tools in performance testing. The most popular features of this tool are:«Point and Click» scripting, global cloud infrastructure, real browser testing.

Apache JMeter is a load testing tool developed by the Apache Software Foundation. Virtual user authorization mechanisms are implemented in the program, user sessions are supported. Organized logging of test results and various visualization of results in the form of diagrams, tables, etc.

MSI Afterburner makes it possible to display various characteristics with an overlay and monitor the consumption of resources by the game. Free tool has many settings, and easy to use. You can download it from the link. Allows you to monitor FPS, CPU load, GPU load, RAM load, cooler rotation speed and much more.

FPS Meter (Android) – FPS Meter shows FPS (frames per second) on top of all windows in any game or application. This allows you to measure the real performance of the device.

GameBench (Android and iOS) is a good tool because it can run any game on the device and work in the background, monitor and record performance and battery consumption. And at this time, the user calmly plays.

Summing up, we can say that performance testing is quite an important part of testing a software product, which determines its operability. This testing has its own subtypes: load, stress, stability and configuration, each of which is responsible for checking the performance of the system under certain conditions. This type of testing will help ensure that the system is able to quickly perform the assigned tasks.