You probably use a variety of tests in your code testing as a developer or QA engineer: unit tests, integration tests, UI tests, and so on. Load checks are often skipped during the sprint or release phase. After all, if the program passes functional testing, it must be ready to go, right? That’s incorrect.
Here are some examples of why you should always load tests before committing just like Kualitee does.
1. Load testing is a method of simulating real-world user scenarios
When you load test your website, app, or API endpoint, you’re simulating how it would work in real life with hundreds, thousands, or millions of users. Don’t forget about the people who will actually use your device or product. Errors, glitches, and bottlenecks should be understood, analyzed, and fixed before they occur. Your system can work very differently for one user (functional testing) than for many (load testing) based on the limits of its resources — which brings us to our next point.
2. When you put a load on your machine, it behaves differently
When running functional tests, KPIs like response time, error rate, memory leakage, and CPU usage may be excellent, but when scaling to thousands of users from all over the world, they may unexpectedly drop and need dev attention.
Don’t forget about the people who will actually use your device or product. Errors, glitches, and bottlenecks should be understood, analyzed, and fixed before they occur. Your system can work very differently for one user (functional testing) than for many (load testing) based on the limits of its resources — which brings us to our next point.
2. When you put a load on your machine, it behaves differently
When running functional tests, KPIs like response time, error rate, memory leakage, and CPU usage may be excellent, but when scaling to thousands of users from all over the world, they may unexpectedly drop and need dev attention.
When you’re load testing, use a variety of load styles. Test for unexpected spikes, sustain a super-heavy load over time, and progressively increase the load to a forecasted real-life volume, for example. Such tests can assist you in determining how your device responds to various traffic events.
3. Your code has the potential to alter your product in unforeseen ways
Assume you’re a conscientious programmer who thoroughly tested your system two months ago. The majority of the API endpoints and resources were found to be functional. There were a few minor bottlenecks discovered, but you fixed them, ran the test again, and found that all was running smoothly.
You’ve probably made some updates to the code since then, and you’ve probably launched new versions.
These changes may have had unintended consequences for your system, due to dependencies, heisenbugs, or other factors that aren’t yet apparent. It’s possible that your system’s ability to bear a heavier load has been harmed as well. Any time you allocate, run an automated load test as part of your continuous integration cycle to ensure you’re not shocked by a crash or slow responsiveness.
Kualitee has a team of testers that can perform load testing for your application with ease.
As a Senior Marketing Consultant at Kualitatem, Ray Parker loves to write tech-related news, articles, specifically quality assurance and information security. I have had years of experience writing in different tech niches and among some include, Dzone, SAP, Dataflop and Readwrite etc. Apart from his techie appearance, he enjoys soccer, reading mysteries, and spending long hours working over at the New York office.