Stress Testing in Software Engineering

• Stress testing is also known as “Endurance Testing”.
• Stress testing is a type of performance testing that evaluates the system’s reliability and stability.
• It checks that how the system works under the load conditions ( normal and at peak point). This testing ensure that system would not crash under critical situations.
• The main aim of the stress testing is to find the limit at which the system or software or hardware breaks.
• This testing tests on the normal operating point and also at the high load point and tests how the system behave at those heavy points.
• Software testers performed this testing to ensure that system’s performance/ behavior and working under load and stress conditions.
• It determines the breaking point of the system, that is just before its system’s crash.
• For example, Notepad is under stress and gives ‘Not Responded’ error message if 5GB data is copied from the website and pasted in notepad.

Need of Stress Testing :

• To evaluate the system behavior under abnormal or heavy conditions.
• Showing appropriate error message when the system or application is under stress.
• To analyze the behavior of the system after failure. 
• To recover the system after failure.
• System failure could result in enormous revenue loss under various abnormal conditions.  
• To verify if unexpected failures do not cause security issues.
• To ensure that data is saved before the system’s crash.