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Load Testing

For web-based systems, Load testing is useful for figuring out how much capacity a web-based system can handle, but it is more important for identifying bottlenecks that occur only under heavy load. The goal of load testing is to simulate real-world usage to find out whether the web-based system can maintain the requested number of users with acceptable response times. We can define this load in terms of concurrent users or HTTP connections trying to accecss the web system. It is considered to be very useful to test the web-based system to its limits by saturating it with a large amount of transactions, users, and data. It’s very helpful to know that how the web application will respond in the real life. According to Kumar, “Load Testing is creation of a simulated load on a real computer system by using virtual users who submit work as real users would do at real client workstations and thus testing the systems ability to support such workload” (Kumar, 2001). To simulate real users, scripts are created that combine together many common user actions into virtual sessions. Bottlenecks in the system will usually become apparent during this type of test. Load testing is also performed with single operations, or use cases, in order to locate performance issues with specific components under load.

Load testing is performed incrementally, with a fixed number of users added per increment. As users are added, the response time and resource utilization values will increase (Mercury, 2006). Obtaining these performance measures helps facilitate planning for future needs. Also, analysis may indicate that the system needs to be scaled in order to accommodate defined performance requirements.

The problem with load testing is to define the load requirements. It is possible to predict a workload in intranets, because they have usually finite and known users. However, with internets, it is very hard to predict how many users can access and load a web system. Mostly calculations are based on word of mouth recommendations, success of marketing campaigns, and in many cases, luck (Hower, 2006).

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