Performance Testing - Volume Testing

Volume Testing: Testing where the system is subjected to large volumes of data. As regards faults that should be found through volume testing are those, where the behaviour of the software deviates from that expected for a specified volume of data. Thus a bank system will be tested for faults at much larger volumes of data, than that of small retailer software. A fault which is only manifested on a table with a million records will be of no concern to the retail software, but will be picked up by the bank testers.

For example, a window often used window object is populated with data, by calling a database object which runs a complex SQL query. Supposing the component is tested against tables with only 4-5 records. Of course it will return within seconds. Everything seems fine. It is then integrated with the window, and system tested. Again everything seems ok. It is only when the application is in User Acceptance (or even gone live) and it is tested against 100,000 records, is it discovered that, the SQL was not properly optimized and the tables not indexed. Thus it should have been tested at the component level.

Volume testing needs two things. Firstly clear expected outcomes of how the software is to behave for a given level of data. Secondly, data, and lots of it.

The expected behaviour at various levels, should be in the specification documentation. Ideally this will say something like "the customers details will be returned returned on the screen within 3 seconds, from a database with 1 million customer records." This gives the tester a benchmark to base a test case on.

The second requirement for data, needs either real life data, or simulated data. Usually, real life data will come in the form of a customer database, that has had private information, such as names and account numbers scrambled. Alternatively records can be created from scratch using automated tools or by adding rules directly on to the database, with SQL.

As with all testing, proper records must be kept showing the inputs, outputs other information, to aid potential debugging and audit purposes.





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