What are different characteristics of load testing?

Load testing can be defined as the process of putting demands on a software system or application or a device and measuring the response of the software system or application or that device.

- Usually load testing is carried out to determine the behavior of the software system, application or device under both kinds of conditions namely the normal load condition and anticipated peak load condition.

- Load testing helps to determine the maximum degree of the operating capacity of the software system or application along with any bottlenecks and to check which element or error and bug is causing degradation of the software system or the application.

- Sometimes the load levied on the software system or application is increased beyond the normal usage limits, in order to test the response and behavior of the software system at unusually high and peak loads. This kind of testing is known as stress testing.

- The load is usually kept so high that the expected result is nothing more than loads of errors and bugs.

- In load testing there is no clear boundary is known to exist when an operation ceases to be a load test and gets converted to a stress test.

Till date it is not very much clear that what are the specific goals of load testing?

The term load testing is often used synonymously with reliability testing, software performance testing and volume testing.

- Load testing is classified under the category of non-functional testing. The term load testing carries a wide number of meanings in the field of software testing.
- Load testing can be said to refer to the practice of determining the expected usage of a software system, program or application by simulating multiple user situation in which many users are accessing the program at the same time.

- Load testing holds more relevance for multi- user software systems or applications which are often built using a client or a server model i.e., using the web servers.
- This does not implies that only the software systems built using client or server model can only undergo the load testing. Also the other types of software systems or applications which are not built using server or client model are also eligible for load testing.

- The most accurate and efficient and effective load testing simulates the actual usage environment, as compared to testing the software system or application using theoretical modeling or the analytical modeling.
- Load testing allows us to measure the QOS performance quotient of any website based on the actual behavior of the customers.
- Most of the tools and frame works that are used to carry out load testing follow the procedure of the classical load testing paradigm.