Load testing applications

The importance of load testing cannot be emphasized in the current digital environment, where apps must function flawlessly and be reliable. Applications that are load tested are a crucial procedure that tests an application’s resilience in real-world scenarios.

Let’s learn about “Load Testing Applications” in detail.

What is Load Testing?

Load testing is a type of testing in software engineering that works by simulating the real-life pressure or load into a software or application so that we can test how much pressure the software can handle. It is done by defining a set of parameters and then testing how much load these parameters can handle, it can include parameters such as performance, resource capacity, throughput, etc.

The main objective of load testing is to have an understanding of the software and its load-handling capabilities. This is important because whenever the development team works to develop software it needs to make sure the software has enough load capacity to handle the users and resources at peak hours, this is why load testing is performed upon the software to have a detailed report about the load the software can handle.

Load Testing Applications

There are several load testing tools or applications which are available in the market, so it’s important to look at the load testing applications that suit your particular needs, here are some of the most known and widely used load testing applications in the market for software development:

1. Apache Jmeter

The Apache Jmeter is a popular load-testing tool that is used in software development to gather information about the behavior as well as the performance of the software. It is purely based on the Java language and is an open-source tool. It is a popular load-testing tool in software engineering because it offers many features such as scripting, performance testing, load testing, protocol support, etc.

Key Features of Apache Jmeter

• Open Source: It is an open source software which means it is free to use. It allows us to easily download and use the software on any system.
• User-Friendly GUI: It has user-friendly GUI (graphical user interface) which helps the users to easily manage and handle the tests inside the software without looking at the complex working of the software.
• Support for Multiple Testing Standards: This load testing tool supports multiple testing standards which helps to easily create the test cases and also run it to check whether the software is complying with those standards.
• Different Types of Outputs: It can show the result of the test in different ways such as tables, charts, log files, etc. This is helpful because it can make the conclusion easier to understand and the development team can make the decision more faster.

2. WebLoad

Whenever we have a high rate of user traffic and highly advanced requirements for the load testing, we can use the web load for the load testing. It offers both cloud machines and an on-machine approach for the testing of internet-based applications. WebLoad is very popular because it can be used by large enterprises and is very easy to use. It also offers capabilities such as DOM-based recording or playback, automatic correlation, and JavaScript scripting language among other things.

Key Features of WebLoad

• Robust Testing Environment: It has a robust testing environment which helps the testing team to create a better and more sophisticated test case for the load testing of their software applications.
• More Accurate Test Results: It can provide more accurate test results for businesses, which makes this tool a better option for businesses which want to have a more accurate test result for their companies and businesses.
• Built-in IDE: This application has built-in IDE that contains many features such as correlation, validation of response, debugging among other features. This is helpful because the development team does not have to use any other third party IDE tool for the testing.
• Predefined Analytics Reports: It has set of predefined analytics reports which helps them in getting more accurate analytical reports without having to create the analytic reports on their own and also gives more time to the people to focus on test cases.

3. NeoLoad

The NeoLoad is also another popular testing tool which is used by the software industry to test the performance and load of the applications. This software tool offers benefits for testers who have complex APIs in their applications as it supports API testing. It can also manage the SDLC (software development life cycle) inside its tool which makes the NeoLoad a good choice for developers who want a testing tool that has load testing and performance testing along with API management and SDLC approach.

Key Features of NeoLoad

• Supports Real Time Collaboration: It supports real time collaboration with other testers which helps the development team to quickly collab with other testing team members and solve any issue faster.
• Supports Low Code Testing: It supports low code testing so there is less requirement of writing code which helps the team to write less code and focus more on running the test cases for their software applications.
• Supports Browser Testing: It supports browser testing with the help of NeoBrowsers so that we can also run the simulations which requires the use of browsers for running the load tests.
• Supports Real Time Test Analysis: It supports real time test analysis which helps to test the software and also look at the analysis of the test while simultaneously running test cases.

4. LoadNinja

The LoadNinja helps us to create load tests that are more advanced without the need for any scripts which helps to reduce the testing time. Also, it replaces the typical emulators that are used in testing by using the real browsers to replicate real-life scenarios. This helps to achieve more real-world feedback about the application. The LoadNinja offers tools for load testing but it is more focused on building applications that can expand easily without losing the performance of the application.

Key Features of LoadNinja

• Supports Historical Analysis: It supports historical analysis of tests which helps the team to analyze the previous historic data about the software and helps to build a better software that can handle more users by understanding their behavior.
• Run Multiple Tests: The LoadNinja can run multiple tests simultaneously which helps to quickly run more tests without having to worry about the time consumption it may take for running these tests.
• API Testing: This application can run API testing when it is required. This means that we can also perform load testing on the APIs by giving required amounts of API requests to the system and analyzing if the system can handle it or not.
• Debugging Support: This software has tools that can help in debugging in case of errors so the team does not require to have any other third party debugging software for testing and debugging the errors of the software.

5. HP Performance Tester

The HP performance tester is another load testing tool which is developed by OpenText and HP organization, also known as LoadRunner. It offers the features to test the load capacity of any particular application under the maximum stress that the software or application can handle apart from the load testing the HP performance tester is also used to look at the overall performance of an application under stress and load which is why many leading software development companies prefer this tool for testing their software’s performance under load and stress.

Key Features of HP Performance Tester

• Real Time Monitoring: The HP Performance Tester offers real time monitoring of the system which helps to monitor the system and the software and look at any potential bugs and errors while it occurs in the system simultaneously.
• Supports Performance Metrics: This tool supports various performance metrics which are required for testing the load capacity of any particular software application. supporting multiple performance metrics helps in the better understanding of the system.
• Monitor Server Performance: We can also use this tool to monitor server performance as well, this helps us to understand how the servers are performing when we give load to the software and increase the requests.
• Used for A/B Testing: This tool can be used for A/B testing which is a popular testing method used in software engineering in which two different versions of a product is shown to the user to test which version is better in terms of conventional goals.
• Supports Parallel Testing: This tool also supports parallel testing of test cases which helps in testing for more test cases in lesser time and helps to make conclusions faster.

6. LoadUI Pro

The LoadUI Pro is mainly used for the testing of web applications because it offers features to test the performance and the load of APIs. This tool is popular because it targets the APIs of software to gather information about how well the software will perform when there is a load on the APIs of the system.

The LoadUI Pro software runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS and it offers the service to test the scalability of the APIs and also allows us to take a look at the performance behaviors of these APIs so that developers can make the necessary changes before making a release for the general public.

Key Features of LoadUI Pro

• Supports Cross Browser Testing: It supports cross browser testing which helps to test the web application in multiple different browsers and look at potential bugs and errors in detail.
• Supports API Testing: This tool also supports API testing which helps the team to run load testing for APIs and understand how well the application serves the API requests when there is a load in the application.
• Used in Different OS: This software can be used in different OS such as – Windows, Linux, macOS which makes it a more better choice for testers who use different operating systems for running the test cases.
• Running Parallel Tests: LoadUI Pro is also capable of running parallel tests which helps in saving the time and getting more test cases up and running in lesser time, this helps in making the overall testing more efficient.

7. LoadView

The LoadView tool follows an approach similar to the WebLoad testing tool, it offers us the feature to run cloud-based load testing for web applications. This is helpful because the cloud testing tools offer us a faster system to run the tests and help in quick testing as well. It is a tool that can help us with how our website responds to a large number of traffic, how the APIs inside of a particular website work when there is a significant amount of traffic etc.

Key Features of LoadView

• Task Management: It can be used for task management, this helps the software development teams to create different tasks and manage them more efficiently by using this software.
• Unicode Compliance: It supports unicode compliance which is important for development of software which is going to be used by the global audience.
• Used for Issue Tracking: It can be used for issue tracking with help of tickets we can create various tickets for the issues and the team can assign the required people for the solution of these issues and once the issue is resolved we can also mark it as closed.
• QA Management: This tool offers QA management, which is a critical point that every development team must take into consideration so that the software application which is being developed has passed quality management metrics.

Challenges and Solutions

1. Performance Bottlenecks

• There can be a challenging task where we will have to look which component of the software is causing performance bottlenecks so that we can solve the issue.
• Solution: To solve the performance bottlenecks we can use various load testing tools that enables us to monitor the components of a software and look at the performance bottlenecks.

2. Issue In Scalability

• There is always a concern of scalability whenever we develop a software application, which makes it a challenge to increase the system performance when there is an increase in user traffic.
• Solution: To solve the challenge of scalability we can use the load testing tool and monitor the performance of the software with increasing load to understand the maximum user rate it can handle.

3. Realistic Load Scenarios

• It is a challenge to create load scenarios that can replicate the real world behavior of the users, when we develop a software we always assume that the software is capable of handling real world users so it becomes a challenge to create load scenarios that are realistic.
• Solution: For solving this issue we can use data analytics to have an understanding about how the user behaves in the system, by understanding the historical data of users we can create more realistic load scenarios.

4. Resource Issues

• It is also important to take a look at the resource that we have are enough or not, resources such as hardware, bandwidth etc. are required for the proper testing of the software.
• Solution: We can use the cloud based testing which offers more resources at a lower cost so that we can easily perform the testing without thinking about the resource constraints.

Case Studies

There are some case studies that we can take a look at to have a clear understanding about how load testing is performed, this can help us in creating a more accurate load test that can help in achieving accurate results, some of those case studies are:

1. Making the New York Marathon Faster

This test has been going on for the past three years. This test is done to make sure that when the runners are in the race, the website can manage the traffic of the worldwide users who are watching the race from different parts of the world.

2. Massage Envy Scales for the Holiday Season

The load testing was used in this case study as well. This provided the source of the CPU overloading and also gave an insight on the maximum capacity of busy holiday season. This is a typical case of load testing case study which helped many software testers to create simulated environments for their testing.

3. Massive Software as a Service Vendor Tests with 20,000 Concurrent Users

In this case study, a massive software as a service company ran test with 20,000 concurrent users to make sure that their system is capable of handing such a large traffic of users. This helped the company to have a more clear understanding about how well the software can handle the concurrent users without any bottlenecks.

Conclusion

The load testing is an important part for the software development cycle, by understanding the software and the amount of load it can handle we can use it’s applications that can serve the needs of the users more easily. When there is a large user base, then it becomes important to understand how much load a particular system can handle so that the software can easily serve the users without causing any bottlenecks.

FAQs

Q.1 How is LoadNinja different from other load-testing tools?

Answer: The LoadNinja is different from the other load testing tools because it offers us the feature to perform advanced load testing without having to implement any scripts. It also uses real web browsers instead of simulators.

Q.2 What is the main focus of LoadUI Pro?

Answer: The main focus of the LoadUI Pro tool is to test the web applications by understanding the maximum load capacity any web application’s API can handle.

Q.3 Which one is better, cloud-based load testing tools or local load testing tools?

Answer: When we are working with smaller applications then we can go for cloud based testing and when there is a big application then we can use the local testing tools because hosting the application on the cloud and testing it can take lots of time.