Stress Testing vs Load Testing

July 27 08:43 2015 by Nataliia Vasylyna Print This Article

Many people involved in the software testing process not once faced with the concept of load testing which means the check of the system’s behavior under normal and high load.

Load testing is sometimes performed in conjunction with performance testing, as during these two types of verification the system performance under loads is checked. It refers to checking the loading speed, scalability, reliability and resource consumption. The main goal is the immersion of system in the multiplayer conditions and a certification that the operation meets the customer’s expectations.

Rather often the novice testers muddle together load testing and stress testing, and sometimes even security testing. This can lead to fatal mistakes and inconsistencies with customer suggestions after the work performed. The fact, that stress testing performs more intensive load for the system under test than usual load testing. Stress testing exposes the program to critical loads and tries to provoke the fall of the program.

The Main Differences Between Stress and Load Testing:

Load testing checks whether the program withstand a large number of concurrent users or transactions during normal daily work, while stress testing is aimed at the outer performance limits caused by the sudden and unplanned increase in the number of users or operations.
During the stress testing, testers need to deliberately create a situation for the fall of the system to be able to expand the performance boundaries. During load testing, testers simply observe the system in terms of adequate multi-user loads, because the developers create software and sometimes lose sight of the need to check the code for withstanding a large number of users.
The final point in the stress testing is a fall of the system, and for load testing – a time when the system under load begins to lose its performance.