The Role of Load and Performance Testing in Project Development

Load testing is the procedure of applying demand on a device or system and evaluating its response. It is performed to decide behavior of a system under normal and anticipated peak load circumstances. It helps in identifying the maximum operating capability of an app as well as the bottlenecks and determines which thing is causing degradation. When the load kept on the system is raised further than normal usage prototypes, to test the response of the system at uncommon high or peak loads, it is termed as stress testing. The load is generally so high that error conditions are the estimated result, although no clean border exists when an activity stops to be a load test and becomes a stress test.

There is small conformity on the particular goals of load testing.  The expression is often used synonymously with concurrency testing, software performance testing, reliability testing. Load testing falls down under non-functional testing area.

The expression load testing is used in multiple ways in the commercial software testing group. Load testing usually is termed as the practice of sculpting the estimated usage of a software program by replicating different users accessing the program concurrently. As such, this testing is more related for multi-user systems; frequently one constructs using a client/server model like web servers. Even, other kinds of software systems can also be load examined. For example, a word processor can be made to read an enormously large document; or a financial package can be made to create a report based on multiple years' worth of data. The most appropriate load testing replicates real use, as differ from testing using theoretical modeling.

Load testing allows you evaluate your website's QOS performance based on real customer nature. Almost all the load testing tools and frame-works go behind the classical load testing model. When customers come to your web site, a script recorder records the interaction and then generates relevant communication scripts. A load creator tries to replay the recorded scripts, which could probably be modified with varied test limits before replay. In the replay process, both the software and hardware statistics will be observed and gathered by the conductor, these guides include the CPU, memory; disk IO of the physical servers and the response time, throughput of the System under Test etc.


Load and performance testing scrutinizes software anticipated for a multi-user audience by subjecting the software to variable amounts of imaginary and real users while supervising performance measurements under these varied loads. Load and performance testing is generally held in a test environment familiar to the production environment before the software system is allowed to go live.