By the time a developer develops a particular software and it is near to its completion, it is most likely to have gone through a number of tests, especially in this environment where testing can happen any time. But irrespective of the number of tests it has gone through, there is only way of knowing whether or not the software can handle the demands of the users that they’re soon going to place on it and that is called load testing. This is the most commonly conducted testing of performance by applying ordinary level of stress to the software application in order to see whether or not it can perform in normal conditions. Load testing simply ensures whether a given program can effortlessly handle what it has been designed to handle.
Have a look at some reasons for performing this load test.
- Realistic load: Suppose you are given to test a car. You can easily accelerate the brakes, open and close the door, turn on and off the radio and also beep the horn to check if everything is fine. With a car test, you can get to see such actions while the car is there in front of your eyes. This is something to load testing for software applications too. There should be no third-side traffic or disconnection and no DNS errors. In other words, you have to check with the ideal conditions that you won’t get after deploying the application on the live server.
- Saves your dollars: If you start testing software applications with the help of cloud services, you can save your time and money. Wondering how? Well, you don’t need to purchase hardware for the new testing lab. You can keep using the same hardware and just pay for the service. You also won’t need the help of support engineers. The money that you normally require for commercial tools can be saved this way.
- Tests agility: By testing the performance of the application, you won’t be tied to simple software just because you can’t switch from one vendor to another at a particular time. The service providers will hence offer you excellent customer care service and they will make sure that you’re happy. When you use Cloud for testing, you can run tests from anywhere with a computer, a browser and an internet connection. Testing schedules also remain intact.
- Degree of service: When you create an application, the main goal is to make it work, to make it handle certain tasks with ease. So, unless you perform this load testing, you won’t be able to know the degree of service that it can offer to its users. It is only through a load tester that you can know about the reality of that which you have created.
Hence, if you’ve recently created a web application, make sure you put it to load testing for the above mentioned reasons. Be sure about its capability before putting it live.