How to use performance testing?

 What is Performance Testing?

Performance testing is the software testing process that is used to test the speed, response time, stability, reliability, scalability, and resource usage of software applications under a specific workload. performance testing is not the same as load testing, which determines the performance of the system under critical number of concurrent users make transactions over a certain period. performance testing is more extensive due to check how the system behaves and looks.

 

Why is it important?

Testers usually do not focus much on testing performance but rather on the features and functionality of the component. In the fielding team, performance testers do not start testing until the application features a fairly stable and they often work in isolation from the delivery team.

However, performance testing should be performed as soon as the new code is available so as to help developers receive real-time feedback on the issues that will be fixed soon.

In order to conduct performance testing successful, testers must do an endurance test - running transactions or scenario continuously for a certain period of time to find memory leaks or defects that would slow down the system -, test breakpoint - increases the load on the system to reach the threshold so that it crashes to see when the system will break down - and eventually test scalability - increase the number of concurrent users, for example, or the size of the database so that it can measure how applications will be dealt with growth.

 

How to use performance testing?

needs automated performance testing tool that can simulate scenarios and user activity. The tools are often free and available as open-source - including JMeter, Grinder, and Locust.io.

In addition, in order to conduct a successful performance testing, testers need technical skills and a good knowledge of the behavior of the software code and interpretations of hardware and software utilization. performance testers must be able to apply a continuous testing and learning how to give real-time feedback to developers so that they can support better tracking performance.

performance testing must follow a number of specific steps to be carried out properly. These measures consist of mapping tools and the environment, the setting acceptance criteria, defining KPIs, setting up a test run, execute them, and monitoring them, and finally, to analyze and assess improvement.

If the performance testers working with developers, they will save a lot of time and make fewer errors earlier in the development phase.

 

Conclusion

performance testing continues to evolve with the changes in modern software development and it is becoming more and more important in building trust in the software. It enables testers and developers to resolve problems in real-time and improve application performance.