Volume testing is a sort of software testing that involves putting a software program through its paces with large volumes of data. The amount of data utilized in this testing might be the size of a database, it can also have the size of an API file under testing.
When testing an application with given database size, the database of the testing program gets expanded to that size, and then the program’s performance gets evaluated. When an application wants to communicate with an interface file, it can do so by reading, writing, or reading and writing from the file.
What Exactly Is the Point of Volume Testing?
Before getting into the details about volume testing, you must understand its requirement. You must perform Volume testing due to the following major reasons:-
- To determine the system’s capacity/volume
- To identify and resolve database-related issues.
- Identify the failures that can occur while dealing with a large amount of data.
- To detect loss of data and storage concerns as soon as possible.
- We may use the database threshold to determine the actual data point at which the system begins to degrade its performance.
- To calculate the risk associated with the database’s capacity when it reaches a specified limit.
- To see how quickly the system responds.
- Recognize the behaviour of the system.
- To avoid a system failure.
Main Characteristics of testing
The following are the main characteristics:-
- The software’s performance degrades with time due to the massive volume of data that accumulates.
- Basically, a test data generator generates the test data.
- The data in the tests must be logically correct.
- The test results help to evaluate the system’s performance.
Attributes of Volume Testing
During volume testing, the the following critical properties get examined:-
- Response Time of the System: Overall response time of the system, as well as application, gets examined during this testing. It is a crucial part of the testing process.
- Data Loss: During volume testing, you should ensure that no data gets lost. You might loose some critical information with loss of data. Hence you must try to prevent any sort of data loss during testing process.
- Data Storage: During this testing, the testers check the data checked to see if it gets stored appropriately. If not, it returns to its original location.
- Data Overwriting: During this testing, you must determine if the data is rewritten without the developer’s knowledge.
What Are the Benefits?
- By discovering faults caused by high amounts of data, volume testing helps lower system maintenance costs.
- Volume testing helps to monitor precisely when the system reaction time decreases.
- Volume testing may give the client or customer the assurance that the software program will perform well in the real world with a large amount of data.
Its Challenges
Let us discuss some of the common challenges faced in volume testing:-
- When working with relational databases, populating the database is difficult due to the RDBMS’s complex structure and thousands of neighboring tables.
- Testers have to deal with Valid data, incorrect data, erroneous data, border data, absent values, and other data types.
- When coping with a significant amount of data, automation may become problematic. Collecting, validating, maintaining, and managing vast amounts of data is difficult.
- The system requires careful watch and the findings require documentation; obtaining correct results takes a great deal of attention and patience.
Volume Testing Best Practices
The following are the best practices related to volume testing:-
- Testers must get aware of the database’s operation.
- When undertaking volume testing, testers should use caution when handling fresh releases.
- Before volume testing, the team must ensure that manual testing is complete.
- Prior to this, it’s a good idea to run happy scenarios.
- In order to maximize the amount of testing, examiners must stagger the number of users.
- By halting all servers and checking the server & application logs, you will get a good indication of the impact.
- To resolve license constraints, the testing team must schedule their thinking time.
- After creating the baseline, the you should examine use case for any potential performance improvements.
Conclusion
Volume testing is an important aspect of determining how well a system performs under heavy data loads. But you can take the help of a professional software testing service provider like QASource to get the best results. Visit QASource now to know more about our testing services and implement top-notch volume testing for your software business.