What is Load Tests

Load Tests are end to end performance tests under anticipated production load. The primary objective of this test is to determine the response times for various time critical transactions and business processes and that they are within documented expectations (or Service Level Agreements - SLAs). The test also measures the capability of the application to function correctly under load, by measuring transaction pass/fail/error rates. This test is one of the most fundamental load and performance tests and needs to be well understood.
This is a major test, requiring substantial input from the business, so that anticipated activity can be accurately simulated in a test situation. If the project has a pilot in production then logs from the pilot can be used to generate ‘usage profiles’ that can be used as part of the testing process, and can even be used to ‘drive’ large portions of the Load Test.
Load testing must be executed on “today’s” production size database, and optionally with a “projected” database. If some database tables will be much larger in some months time, then Load testing should also be conducted against a projected database. It is important that such tests are repeatable as they may need to be executed several times in the first year of wide scale deployment, to ensure that new releases and changes in database size do not push response times beyond prescribed SLAs.