There are two main categories of performance tests. The first category tests how much load a system can handle and still respond quickly. The second category tests, is a system currently performing as expected.
Performance testing is a critical facet of software testing that should never be overlooked, particularly in enterprise-grade applications. Enterprise applications are often complex, and multifaceted, and cater to a large number of users. They must maintain a consistent level of performance, regardless of the load they experience. Without proper performance testing, these applications could suffer from slowdowns or crashes, which can result in revenue losses and damage to the company's reputation.
One of the primary reasons why performance testing is essential in enterprise applications is due to their need for high reliability and stability. In an enterprise environment, system downtime can result in significant productivity and monetary losses. By employing different types of performance testing, enterprises can ensure that their systems can handle the expected user load and beyond. This will help to identify potential issues that could cause the system to fail under stress and enable the team to rectify them before they impact the user experience.
Performance testing is also crucial for the scalability of the enterprise applications. As a company grows, its systems must scale to accommodate increasing customer or user demand. Scalability testing helps to evaluate how well the application performs as the load increases and provides valuable insights into the system's future performance under expected growth conditions. It can also offer guidance for necessary infrastructure and resource upgrades.
There are four major types of performance testing that can help ensure a system's durability.
- Load Testing: This assesses the system's behavior under a specific load, usually between a specified range. For example, it can test how the system performs with hundreds or thousands of simultaneous users.
- Stress Testing: This assesses the system's behavior under extreme load conditions, often past its specified limits. The goal is to identify the breaking point and ensure that the system fails gracefully.
- Endurance Testing: Also known as soak testing, this assesses the system's behavior under a continuous expected load. It can help in identifying issues that appear over time.
- Scalability Testing: This evaluates the system's ability to scale as the load increases, which can be crucial for planning future growth.
Performance testing is an important pillar in the development and maintenance of robust enterprise-grade applications. It can identify weak points, estimate system capacity, detect issues that arise over time, and evaluate the ability of an application to scale with increasing user demand.
We use packages such as Artillery to run performance tests of both categories:
- Tests that put load on a system, i.e. load tests, stress tests, and soak tests
- Tests that verify that a system is working as expected, i.e. continuous functional tests, aka: synthetic monitoring, semantic monitoring, production scripted testing, and continuous verification. Automated probes running continuously against services & APIs to test key user stories.
