What is Volume Testing?
Volume Testing is performed on a software application system, where a fluctuating magnitude of data is expected. This testing involves using a variation of data and contents for testing the functional flow through the system. The observation on performance, response time, functional characteristics are recorded and presented to business personnel. In order to make sure that the business is receiving what they expect, and the vendor is delivering a quality product.
It is also known as flood testing is a type of software testing in which software application is tested by supplying a large amount of data. Software application performance is checked by providing a huge volume of data in the database. In this database, size is stretched to the threshold limit by providing bulk data and then the response time and behavior of the system under various scenarios is tested. Volume testing basically checks the efficiency of software applications under various data volumes in the database. It could be database updates, new data entries or bulk data retrieval from the database.
Why do we Need Volume Testing?
Before understanding the need for Volume testing, let us consider a scenario. Suppose there is an e-commerce web application that is normally accessed by 100 users. At the time of sale or some other festive season, on the web application around 500 users tries to access the application and the application crash or the data could not load successfully causing problems for the customers. To handle such real-time situations, Volume testing is very important.
Some points highlighting the importance of Volume testing are mentioned below:
- To find out the problems in the early stages of testing that could occur on an increase in the volume of data in the database.
- To identify the threshold of a database, at which stage system starts degrading its performance.
- To identify if there is any data loss when the capacity of the database increases to a certain limit.
- To help to find out the various system performance issues before handling the client.
How Volume Testing is Performed?
Database performance tools are available in the market for Volume testing. There are some points that need to be kept in mind for the successful.
Volume testing which is mentioned below:
- Checking of logs on various loads in the software application.
- Checking of the response time of the software application on applying low, medium and high loads.
- Checking if the data is persisted in the database if inserted in bulk at a time.
- Checking if there is no data loss or no data is overwritten in the database when manipulated in bulk.
- Checking the affected areas in an application if the high volume of data is applied.
- Checking if there are any memory issues created on working with bulk data in an application.
- Checking if the application is crashing or any other blocker issue that does not allow the user to access the application is occurring on applying huge volume of data.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Volume Testing
Advantages
Below mentioned are some of the advantages:
- Volume testing gives the confidence to the team how capable the application is to be released in the real world.
- It helps to find the various bottlenecks in the application which remain uncovered during the development.
- Regress volume testing covering various scenarios reduces the risk of loss of market reputation and money (which will be spent on the maintenance cost of an application).
- It gives a clear picture of the hardware required like memory, CPU storage, etc for the smooth functioning of the application.
- Gives the almost exact idea to the team of how capable is the application to handle the load.
Disadvantages
Below given are some of the disadvantages
- A specialized database performance testing team is required to carry out the Volume testing which would cause extra costs of the project.
- A lot of time is wasted in carrying out the specific volume testing covering all the test scenarios, creating scripts and executing those scripts which could hamper the release time of the application.
- Some projects like desktop applications handled only by few users do not require a separate stage of the Volume of testing.
- It is not possible to create the exact fragmentation of memory used in the real world.
- An exact copy of the real environment is difficult and tricky.
Volume Testing Tools
Though the Volume testing can be done both manually or by the automated scripts executed using the tools. Many tools for Volume testing are available in the market both open source and paid. Tools should be used according to the project requirements. Some of the Volume testing tools available in the market are given below:
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HammerDb
HammerDb is one of the open-source tools available in the market providing support to various databases like Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. It provides extensibility for both. Windows and Linux Operating Systems. One of the best features of HammerDb is that it provides standard performance metrics of the databases and allows the users to interact via both the GUI and command line.
NoSQLMap
NoSQLMap is an open-source tool available in the market which is written in Python language. It’s basically used to exploit flaws in NoSQL databases. Currently, it provides exploit only for MongoDB database and is very effective in Volume testing of any software application.
DbFit
It is an open-source tool that is used for automated database testing and enables efficient database testing. In DbFit, test cases are written in simple text format. DbFot works simply with the SQL queries and Stored Procedures.
Conclusion
The above explanation about Volume testing clearly shows the importance of it in any software application. It is very important to check the behavior of the application under high loads of data either manually or through the use of automation tools. Though there are some challenges while performing it like memory fragmentation, an exact replica of the production environment can cope up to some extent. Volume testing is not new, almost every testing service provides Volume testing as it is equally important as other functional and non-functional testing.
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