Stress testing

Stress testing is a form of testing that is used to determine the stability of a given system or entity. It involves testing beyond normal operational capacity, often to a breaking point, in order to observe the results. Stress testing may have a more specific meaning in certain industries, such as fatigue testing for materials.

n software testing, a system stress test refers to tests that put a greater emphasis on robustness, availability, and error handling under a heavy load, rather than on what would be considered correct behavior under normal circumstances. In particular, the goals of such tests may be to ensure the software does not crash in conditions of insufficient computational resources (such as memory or disk space), unusually high concurrency, or denial of service attacks. Examples: A web server may be stress tested using scripts, bots, and various denial of service tools to observe the performance of a web site during peak loads. Stress testing may be contrasted with load testing: Load testing examines the entire environment and database, while measuring the response time, whereas stress testing focuses on identified transactions, pushing to a level so as to break transactions or systems. During stress testing, if transactions are selectively stressed, the database may not experience much load, but the transactions are heavily stressed. On the other hand, during load testing the database experiences a heavy load, while some transactions may not be stressed. System stress testing, also known as stress testing, is loading the concurrent users over and beyond the level that the system can handle, so it breaks at the weakest link within the entire system.

Load testing
Load testing is the process of putting demand on a system or device and measuring its response. Load testing is performed to determine a systems behavior under both normal and anticipated peak load conditions. It helps to identify the maximum operating capacity of an application as

well as any bottlenecks and determine which element is causing degradation. When the load placed on the system is raised beyond normal usage patterns, in order to test the system's response at unusually high or peak loads, it is known as stress testing. The load is usually so great that error conditions are the expected result, although no clear boundary exists when an activity ceases to be a load test and becomes a stress test.

Verification
Verification ensures the product is designed to deliver all functionality to the customer; it typically involves reviews and meetings to evaluate documents, plans, code, requirements and specifications; this can be done with checklists, issues lists, and walkthroughs and inspection meetings.

Validation
Validation ensures that functionality, as defined in requirements, is the intended behavior of the product; validation typically involves actual testing and takes place after verifications are completed

Pilot testing
Pilot testing involves having a group of end users try the system prior to its full deployment in order to give feedback on IIS 5.0 features and functions. The level of pilot testing you want to perform depends on the size and scope of your migration project. For larger projects, a formal, carefully planned pilot is essential. For any size project, its good to have selected end users test the system prior to full deployment