Stability Testing

In this section, we are going to understand stability testing, which is an essential part of Performance testing.

And we also learn about its needs, the purpose of stability testing, why we need to perform the stability testing, example, advantage, and disadvantage.

Introduction of Stability Testing

Stability testing is a software testing procedure where we analyze the application's performance by applying the load for a particular duration of time.

For the stability factor, we can say that when N-number of users using the application simultaneously for a particular time.

It comes under the Non-Functional Testing directed as part of performance testing.

Stability testing will provide the advanced substance in software dependability, error handling, robustness, and scalability of an application under massive load instead of analyzing the system behavior under usual conditions.

Generally, it evaluates the stability problems of the application and the productivity of a developed product. And the primary intended of executing the stability testing is to emphasize the software component to the extreme.

Why do we need to perform Stability Testing?

We need to perform the stability testing to achieve the following aspects:

• It helps us to detect the bugs when the system is pushed to strict circumstances and fix those bugs or defects that can increase the software's constancy or the application.
• The life of the software is enhanced if we execute the stability testing.
• If we performed stability tests endlessly, we could identify the constancy of the product.
• If we prepare the system in advance, we can endure any stress/

Purpose of the Stability Testing

Following are the significant objective of stability testing:

• The primary goal of Stability testing is to analyze if the software application fails over regular use at any point of time by exercising its full range of use.
• It helps us find the system's robustness and ensure that the system can handle a vast program.
• The stability testing will allow us to identify the application's constancy, which also enhances the developer's confidence.
• If we perform the stability testing, we can quickly identify the bug in the system in a stressful situation.
• The execution of stability testing will improve the complete evaluation and efficiency of the product.
• It helps us to analyze the database connectivity and test the response time of an application.

How to do Stability Testing?

1. In software testing, the Stability Testing can be executed either manually or with the help of some automation tools.
2. The main reason of performing stability testing is to create stability for the application. A minimum of three batches can be analyzed to assess the strength of the software product.
3. It helps us to define the scope of testing and identify business issues to validate system performance and load data as per user.
4. Any modification in data affects the entire application, and after analyzing the load, if we identify any issues, it can be retested.
5. The primary step in stability testing is regression testing or smoke testing. Once this is passed, we can proceed with functional or non-functional testing.
6. In functional testing, the performance of all different features can be completed, and non-functionaltesting will contain the performance-related issues.
7. It governs the Bug tracking and reporting and their appropriate mapping with the requirements.

Stability Testing Tools

Each tool has its functionality to test the stability of an application. Still, every organization has specific measures, environmental aspects of an application, and also simulating while selecting any tool to test an application.

The test engineer needs a test tool that can have the load factor under several twisted scenarios.

The tools used for stability testing rely on the product the user wants to test because there is no such categorization to define which tool is best and worst available in the market for Stability testing.

However, we have several tools available in the market for stability testing, where some of them are open-source and some of them are licensed.

Following are the most commonly used tools of Stability testing:

• System Stability Tester
• HeavyLoad
• FurMark
• IntelBurn Test

System Stability Tester

The system stability tester tool is used for CPU and RAM stressing, burning, and benchmarking while consuming all our processor volume.

A specific stress testing process can be launched one by one or concurrently, and it can be enabled and disabled at any time throughout the test.

Feature of System stability Tester

Some of the crucial characteristics of the System stability tester tool are as follows:

• It is a multithreaded processor.
• The System stability tester tool can be performed on multiple platforms.

HeavyLoad

The HeavyLoad is used to analyze the stability of the system's primary components like memory, processor, and hard drive. It analysis how our system performs when we have decreasing disk space.

It can also execute these tests independently or altogether, which is when maximum stress will place the system hardware and the power supply.

Features of HeavyLoad tool

We list some of the essential features of the HeavyLoad tool, which are as follows:

• It is an open-source tool.
• The HeavyLoad has used tests the allocated memory.
• It does complex calculations to reproduce the load on our processor.
• It is used to replicate the hard drive disk access.
• HeavyLoad tool can work on multiple platforms such as Windows XP to Windows 8 32-bit and 64-bit.

FurMark

The FurMark is an open-source tool that can be used easily. It is a lightweight but very rigorous graphics card or GPU stress test on the Windows platform.

It is one of the most commonly used stress test tools for graphics cards because the algorithms used by this tool can be optimized to heat the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), test its stability, and resistance to extreme circumstances.

Features of HeavyLoad tool

Some of the crucial characteristics of the FurMark tool are as follows:

• It is compatible with various operating systems such as Windows XP and all the above versions of it.
• The FurMark tool is available in multiple languages such as Spanish, English, and German.

IntelBurn Test

Another open-source and CPU stress benchmark and application stability testing tool is the IntelBurn test, which helps us to push the CPU to its maximum limit.

The IntelBurn tool is easy to use and a portable device that can check real-time errors.

Features of IntelBurn test tool

The essential features of the IntelBurn test tool are as following:

• It is compatible with the modern Windows-NT-based operating systems and all the above versions of it.
• It provides real-time output to the screen.
• The IntelBurn tool has a better appearance as compared to the other stability testing tools.
• It simplifies the procedure of Linpack and shortens the process of selecting a test size to use.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Stability Testing

Below are the benefits and drawback of stability testing.

Benefits of Stability Testing

The advantages of Stability testing are as follows:

• It leads to an improved end-user experience and helps in getting a more stable system.
• It also monitors the efficiency of the System.
• It will analysis the stability and durability of the System under massive load.
• Stability testing provides the limit of the data that a system can handle virtually.
• It gives them confidence in the performance of the System.
• Stability testing make sure that even if there are many users, work can be constant without resuming the System.

Disadvantages of Stability Testing

Following are the drawback of not executing the stability testing on the system under test:

• If we do not perform the stability testing, the system might fail due to additional load on the CPU or processor that may cause the output's data loss.
• The System fails shortly without implementing the stability testing and slows down the speed with a massive amount of data.
• If we do not perform the System's stability testing, it will have a negative effect on the System's performance as well as the business.
• It works unusually when it goes to the changing environments.

Overview

In this tutorial, we understood that stability testing is an essential part of performance testing under the non-functional testing methodology.

The stability testing is executed to identify the scalability of the System in a specified environment and only concerned with the features of the application.

It helps in achieving performance when the System is under stress.

This testing helps us to analyze the stability of different components like processors, CPUs, and memory.

We also learned that stability testing is used to stabilize the system and deliver the good quality product.