An Overview of Stress Testing

Anything that is stressed beyond a certain degree has significant implications in humans, robots, or programmes. It either causes significant harm or entirely destroys it. Similarly, we will learn how to stress test web apps as well as the consequences in this article.

 

We need to determine the breaking point and then the solution to prevent such scenarios in order to avoid lasting harm to your applications or websites when they are strained, i.e. excessively loaded. 

 

Consider how frustrating it would be if your shopping website went down during the Diwali sale. What would be the financial impact?

 

What is Stress Testing?

 

Stress testing is a type of software testing that verifies a software application's stability and reliability. Stress testing is used to evaluate software's resilience and error handling skills under extremely high load circumstances, as well as to ensure that software does not crash in critical scenarios. It also goes beyond regular operational circumstances to see how the software performs in difficult situations.

 

Stress Testing is also known as Endurance Testing in the software engineering world. AUT is strained for a brief length of time during Stress Testing to determine its withstanding capabilities. 

 

The most common use of stress testing is to find the point at which a system, software, or hardware fails. It also examines whether the system can manage errors effectively under harsh settings.

 

When 5GB of data is copied from a website and put into a notepad, the application under test will be pressured. Notepad is overworked and displays a 'Not Responded' error as briefed by Guru99.

 

Objectives of Stress Testing

 

The basic goal of stress testing is to achieve the following outcomes:

 

• The fundamental goal of stress testing is to ensure that the programme does not fail when computing resources such as disc space, memory, and network requests are in short supply.

• Stress testing ensures that the system breaks and recovers without difficulty, which is known as the recoverability process.

• Stress testing can be used to identify hardware and data corruption concerns.

• Stress testing will assist us in identifying security flaws that may emerge during periods of persistent peak load.

• It aids in determining the data integrity of the software programme under excessive stress, implying that the data should be in a reliable state after a failure.

 

(Also Read- A Beginner Guide to Interoperability Testing in Software Testing)

 

Features of Stress Testing

 

The following are the fundamental characteristics of stress testing:

 

• Stress testing also ensures that unanticipated failures do not compromise security.

• It's used to figure out how the system functions in unusual situations and how it reacts after a failure.

• Stress testing is done to determine whether or not the system has saved data before crashing.

• When the system is stressed, stress testing ensures that the appropriate error message is shown.

 

 

Advantages of Stress Testing

 

Stress testing is one of the most useful software testing procedures since it helps the team to assure the product's performance. Furthermore, it verifies the software's security, dependability, and error-handling capabilities, further enhancing its quality. 

 

Other benefits of this testing include:

 

• Defines whether data can be corrupted if the system is overworked.

• Provides an assessment of how far an application can go above the desired load without failing or creating problems, as well as slowness.

• Allows you to create application-monitoring triggers that will alert you to any incoming failures.

• Ensures that stressful situations do not expose security flaws.

• The side effects of common hardware or supporting application failures are determined.

• It assists in determining which types of failures are the most important to plan for.

• The point is that determining how much stress testing is necessary is often challenging. Because stress tests are designed to be unrealistic, some stakeholders may ignore the results.

 

(Related reading: What is A/B testing?)

 

Disadvantages of Stress Testing

 

The following are some of the most prevalent downsides of Stress Testing:

 

• Even open-source solutions such as JMeter require a load testing environment that is as near to the production environment as feasible.

• If we're building a Stress test script, the individual authoring it should have sufficient scripting expertise of the tool's supported language.

• If we use stress testing, we will need more resources, which will make this testing more expensive.

• If we conduct the Stress Testing manually, it will be a time-consuming and difficult operation to complete, and the results may not be as expected. (Here)

 

How to Perform a Stress Test?

 

Stress tests are done in a number of steps. Here is the stress test procedure that is used by testers:

 

1. Setting up the test environment

 

All of the software, hardware, tools, and network settings required for the stress test have been identified, and the test environment has been set up.

 

2. Determine the performance acceptance metrics and criteria

 

Categorize and determine the metrics that will be used to assess the system's resilience to stress. Establish the system's success criteria by determining the maximum load that a system must withstand in order to pass or fail the stress test.

 

3. The test's planning and design

 

Create a stress test plan and design, as well as test case scenarios.

 

4. The test environment must be set up

 

Set up the test environment with the tools and resources needed to carry out the plan, as well as other components that may be tested.

 

5. Create a stress test plan

 

Develop and implement a stress test plan based on industry best practices.

 

6. Carry out stress tests

 

Carry out the tests and keep an eye on them. Gather and verify test data and outcomes.

 

7. Examine the outcomes

 

The stress test findings should be shared. When all metrics are within acceptable bounds, no thresholds have been crossed, and all data has been gathered, a stress test for a certain scenario and setup is considered complete.

 

(Must read: A Guide to Conformance Testing)

 

 

Types of Stress Testing

 

Stress testing entails running simulations in order to uncover hidden flaws. Several methods to these exercises have been identified in the literature on company strategy and corporate governance. Stylized scenarios, hypotheticals, and historical scenarios are among the most common.

---

Types of stress testing

---

1. Historical Stress Testing

 

The business—or asset class, portfolio, or individual investment—is run through a simulation based on a past crisis in a historical scenario. The stock market crash of October 1987, the Asian crisis of 1997, and the tech bubble that burst in 1999-2000 are all examples of historical crises.

 

2. Hypothetical Stress Testing

 

A hypothetical stress test is usually more precise, concentrating on how a given organisation would handle a specific catastrophe. A corporation in California, for example, would stress-test against a hypothetical earthquake, while an oil company might do so in the event of a Middle East war.

 

In the sense that only one or a few test variables are changed at a time, stylized scenarios are a bit more scientific. The Dow Jones index, for example, might lose 10% of its value in a week as part of the stress test.

 

3. Simulated Stress Testing

 

Monte Carlo simulation is one of the most well-known stress-testing methodologies. This form of stress testing may be used to predict the likelihood of certain outcomes based on specified criteria. Various economic factors, for example, are frequently included in Monte Carlo simulations.

 

Stress testing, as we've learned, is used to evaluate a system under harsh conditions. It can ensure that the system returns to its previous state.

 

It's a form of non-functional testing that's usually done after the functional testing is completed. Stress testing focuses only on putting the system through its paces in order to determine its breaking point and check if appropriate messages are displayed when the system isn't responding.