What is Performance Testing?

Performance testing is a sort of software testing that assesses a software application's speed, stability, scalability, and dependability under various workload situations. The purpose of performance testing is to detect and measure how well an application performs in real-world settings and to decide whether it fits the organization's performance requirements.

Simulating different types of user traffic, such as concurrent user loads, user actions, or data quantities, to analyze the system's ability to handle such traffic without affecting speed, reaction time, or system stability is what performance testing entails.

There are several types of performance testing such as:

• Load testing: Load testing is performed to assess the application's performance under normal and peak user loads to ensure that it can manage the expected number of users and transactions.
• Stress Testing: This testing is used to analyze the application's performance under extreme workloads that exceed its capacity to determine the breaking point and measure how the application responds when its limits are exceeded.
• Spike Testing: This sort of testing is used to assess the performance of an application when there is a rapid increase in user load, which can produce spikes in resource utilization and impair the program's performance.
• Endurance testing: Endurance testing is performed to analyze the application's performance over a long time to uncover any performance issues resulting from long-term usage.
• Volume testing: Volume testing is used to analyze an application's performance when dealing with huge amounts of data, such as user data or database records, to ensure that the program can handle the predicted volume of data without degrading performance.
• Scalability testing: Scalability testing is used to assess an application's ability to scale up or down in response to changing user loads, ensuring that the program can handle the predicted increase in user traffic without affecting performance.

Note : If you're a beginner aiming to familiarize yourself with frequently asked performance testing interview questions explore our comprehensive guide for better understanding.