What is Stability Testing?
Process capability determines if a process will deliver a product or service that meets the customers requirements. Customer requirements are defined using an Upper Specification Limit (USL) and a Lower Specification Limit (LSL). A process has to be stable before it can be determined to be capable. Capability indices help to reduce the variation relative to the specifications or requirements, achieving increasingly higher Cp and Cpk values. Before capability analysis is completed, a histogram and control chart need to be completed.
Stability Testing is defined as the ability of the product to continue to function, over time and over its full range of use, without failing or causing failure.
It is a Non-Functional Testing Technique, with the aim to stress the software component to the maximum. In the process, determine how well it performs under loads at acceptable levels, peak loads, loads generated in spikes, with a large number of volumes data to be processed, etc.
Stability Testing is done to check the efficiency of a developed product beyond normal operational capacity, often to a breakpoint. There is greater significance is on error handling, software reliability, robustness and scalability of a product under heavy load rather than checking the system behavior under normal circumstances.
Stability testing assesses stability problems. This testing is primarily intended to check if the application will crash at any point in time.
Stability testing is also referred to as a Load or endurance testing.
In this tutorial, you will learn-
Problems if a System under test has not undergone Stability Test
For an application under test where a large number of users are introduced and applications that have to run for months without restarting, a number of problems are likely to occur:
The possible error can be faced,
- the system slows down
- the system encounters functionality problems
- the system shows wired behavior
- the system crashes altogether
In Software Engineering, Stability Testing typically involves exercising the system with heavy users (virtual) and measuring the performance parameters to verify whether the system can support the anticipated load.
Why do Stability Testing
This kind of testing helps users to understand the ways the system will work in real-life situations.
Hence, Stability Testing allows you to check,
- Provide confidence in the stability of your system under test.
- Ensure that your system can handle large programs.
- Monitor the effectiveness of your system.
- Test system stability under stress.
It plays an important role in product development as it is used to determine the limitations of a software product under test before it is released or the areas of more improvement before the product goes live or at Production.
A very common example of Stability testing technique is
Online Shopping Portals: Stability testing will check how the website will behave when -
- High Amount of data entered at peak time
- Number of hits at a certain specific time
- Page load issue at the same time
- Behavior of system
- Responsiveness of the system and many more come under Stability Testing
Another example
A CPU test is a popular form of stability test under Performance Testing technique. This test checks for processor stability and also monitors its performance as the processor's workload is increased.
How to do Stability Testing
- To determine the scope and objective of the testing, we must ensure that the Application Server(s) do not crash during the Load Test executions.
- To determine the Business issues, verify the system performance and load as per end user perspective.
- To assign the different Responsibilities and Roles like -Creating Test plan, Test Case design, Test case review, Test execution, etc.
- To ensure the Test deliverables within the specified time
- To ensure proper Load Testing tools and experience team is present for the same.
- To measure the risk and cost involves in the testing. This will determine the cost of each execution in terms of CPU utilization and memory.
- Determine the Defect tracking and reporting and there proper mapping with the requirements.
Test Case for Stability Testing for CPU Performance
- To verify the Upper limit of the system.
- How system crashes or recovers.
- A total number of transactions completed per request.
- Whether or not transaction response stays steady or increases over time.
- How the system behaves under heavy load.
- Its response and behavior under heavy load.
Test Reports for Stability Testing
Several statistics are gathered and measured during test executions; these numbers are analyzed in order to generate a report and to identify possible performance problems.
Examples of statistics collected under test are:
- Transaction Response Times: The average time is taken to perform transactions during the test. This statistic will evaluate whether the performance of the server is within the acceptable minimum and maximum transaction performance time periods defined for the system. This information will evaluate the time taken in processing the request by the web server and sent to the application server, which in most of the cases will make a request to a database server.
- Hits Per Second: The number of hits made on the server by users. This statistics benefits to determine the number of load users generate, with respect to a number of hits.
- Throughput: The amount of throughput on the Web server during the test which is measured in bytes. Throughput means the amount of data that the users received from the server at any given time. This statistic helps to evaluate the amount of load that users generate.
- Transaction per second: These are the total number of completed transactions (both successful and failed) performed during a test. This statistic helps to check the actual transaction load on the system.
- CPU: CPU percentage utilization spent during a test.
- Memory: Memory usage during a test.
- Disk: utilization of disk spaces spent during a test.
By the time, you can now easily identify that –
Stability Testing comes under Performance Testing –a technique that is performed to check some of the quality attributes of Software like stability, reliability, and availability.
This testing is used to determine how fast a system or sub-system performs under a particular workload.
Performance Testing has many types and stability testing is one of them.
- Stress testing: It is a testing type which checks the robustness of the system beyond the system capacity.
- Spike testing: It is used to check the behavior of a system by increasing a load of a system instantly. The objective is to check at which point the system will be having performance issues, or it will pass.
- Scalability testing: It is used to check the capabilities of a system. How effective the system will going to behave in growing needs, change in size and change in volume.
- Volume testing: It is a non-functional testing technique where software under test is subjected to a huge volume of data, and the behavior of a system is checked and verified accordingly.
- Load or Stability testing: (already discussed above)
Some of the tools for Performance Testing are as –
- WebLOAD
- Apache JMeter
- NeoLoad
- CloudTest
- Loadstorm
- LoadUI
- WAPT
- LoadImpact
- Loadster
- Httperf
- OpenSTA
- Performance Tester
- Testing Anywhere
Conclusion:
Stability testing is a non-functional process of testing the behavior of the application by applying maximum load. It is performed to find out the scalability of the system in a given environment.
This article is contributed by Vaibhav Chitransh
/ stəˈbɪl ɪ ti /
||
noun,pluralsta·bil·i·ties.
firmness in position.
Chemistry. resistance or the degree of resistance to chemical change or disintegration.
resistance to change, especially sudden change or deterioration: The stability of the economy encourages investment.
steadfastness; constancy, as of character or purpose: The job calls for a great deal of emotional stability.
Aeronautics. the ability of an aircraft to return to its original flying position when abruptly displaced.
Roman Catholic Church. a vow taken by a Benedictine monk, binding him to residence for life in the same monastery in which he made the vow.
RELATED CONTENT
RELATED WORDS
strength, support, cohesion, security, balance, establishment, resoluteness, perseverance, toughness, durability, permanence, endurance, steadiness, aplomb, soundness, backbone, solidity, determination, firmness, constancy
Nearby words
- stabbing,
- stabbingly,
- stabilate,
- stabile,
- stabilimeter,
- stability pact,
- stabilization,
- stabilization fund,
- stabilization print,
Origin of stability
1400–50;< Latinstabilitās, equivalent to stabili(s) stable2 + -tās--ty2; replacing late Middle Englishstablete< Old French< Latin, as above
SYNONYMS FOR stability6steadiness, strength, soundness, poise, solidity, balance.
Related formsnon·sta·bil·i·ty, nouno·ver·sta·bil·i·ty, nounself-sta·bil·i·ty, noun
Dictionary.com UnabridgedBased on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019
Examples from the Web for stability
- But that stability can be withdrawn as easily as it was granted.Cambodia’s Smoke-and-Mirrors Democracy|David Shaftel|January 9, 2015|DAILY BEAST
- One specific kind of emergency is at the heart of this, such as when an airplane suffers a loss of stability at night.Flight 8501 Poses Question: Are Modern Jets Too Automated to Fly?|Clive Irving|January 4, 2015|DAILY BEAST
- The pyramids of Meroe await a day when stability will allow outsiders to peek at a forgotten ancient kingdom.Egypt Ain’t The Only Pyramid Show In Town|Nina Strochlic|December 11, 2014|DAILY BEAST
- A Shiite stronghold wrapped in a Sunni explosive belt—not exactly a picture of stability.The Nuclear Deal That Iran’s Regime Fears Most|Djavad Khadem|November 22, 2014|DAILY BEAST
- In a country where stability is still fragile and requires careful tending, Ebola is a wrecking ball.Liberia’s Ebola Famine|Abby Haglage, Nina Strochlic|November 13, 2014|DAILY BEAST
- He saw, it is true, that there was no stability in his position, and that he could not possibly remain where he was.
- For myself, I see clearly that mankind thirsts after stability.
- Through a standard meaning, it gets identity and stability of character.
- At length the stability of the ship prevailed, and she began to right.
- If so, sexual selection must be conducive to the stability of species.
![Stabilty Before Capability Stabilty Before Capability](/uploads/1/2/4/8/124896682/463617711.gif)
British Dictionary definitions forstability
nounplural-ties
the ability of an aircraft to resume its original flight path after inadvertent displacement
meteorol![Capability Capability](/uploads/1/2/4/8/124896682/653074363.gif)
- the condition of an air or water mass characterized by no upward movement
- the degree of susceptibility of an air mass to disturbance by convection currents
ecologythe ability of an ecosystem to resist change
electrical engineeringthe ability of an electrical circuit to cope with changes in the operational conditions
a vow taken by every Benedictine monk attaching him perpetually to the monastery where he is professed
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Medicine definitions forstability
n.
The condition of being stable or resistant to change.
The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.