Purpose of Volume Testing and what are its features.

Volume testing belongs to the group of non-functional tests. Huge amount of data is processed through the application (which is being tested) in order to check the extreme limitations of the system.
- Volume testing refers to testing a software application for a certain data volume.
- Volume testing can (and should) be used in component testing.
- Volume testing will also be undertaken (normally) as part of the User Acceptance test.
- Volume testing is used to find faults and give credible information about the state of the component, on which business decisions can be taken.
- Volume testing might take place to confirm that the central core architecture is the one to proceed with.
- Developers across customers & finish users can do. The tests can be outsourced to a testing laboratory that specializes in performance testing.

Examples:
- Online system: Input fast, but not necessarily fastest possible, from different input channels.
- Database system: The database should be very large. Every object occurs with maximum number of instances.
- File exchange: Especially long files. Maximal lengths. Lengths longer than typical
maximum values in communication protocols.
- Disk space: Try to fill disk space everywhere there are disks.

Volume test is interesting if
• The volume test is not executed before.
• Does the system always has the necessary memory resources?
• Can we guarantee this if several systems share the hardware?
• Is it guaranteed that no larger data volumes than specified will occur?
• Is there a low risk if data volume turn greater than specified anyway but the
system does not work well enough then?