Soak Testing confirms the stability, durability, and functionality of software systems over long periods of time. By exposing an application to constant and heavy load, soak testing reveals vulnerabilities and provides developers with the opportunity to optimize their products for maximum performance. 

What is Soak Testing?

Soak testing, also known as non-functional testing, is a method of testing software applications under heavy load over a long period of time. It’s both a non-functional test and a stress testing method. Soak testing measures how well an application can handle more users or more demanding tasks over a longer period of time. The process tells software testers whether the application is performing well after hours or days of use. Soak testing reveals software problems that don’t become apparent until the application has been running for a long time, like a slow memory leak.

Why Should You Perform a Soak Test?

A soak test is essential to ensuring the stability and reliability of the software application. It helps identify hidden, critical problems such as memory leaks and performance issues. By simulating large workloads over a long period of time, soak testing helps to identify and resolve these problems while improving the system’s performance. It also reduces the chances of system failure and guarantees a good user experience under very high real-world loads.

How to Do a Soak Test?

Soak testing is a multi-step testing procedure:

Step 1: Specify goals and objectives: Testers must specify the objectives and scope of their soak tests. Additionally, they must decide which system characteristics (e.g., stability, memory usage, etc.) they wish to examine. Subsequently, the performance criteria and execution time must be specified.

Step 2: Create test scenarios: Create test scenarios that replicate how an application would be used. The application’s load ought to be progressively increased using these test scenarios. Here, the variations in data volume, transaction volume, and user engagement must be considered by testers.

Step 3: Design a testing setup: In addition to configuring software, hardware, databases, and networking components, testers and developers also have to set up test environments. It is also their responsibility to ensure that the performance tracking tools are placed correctly.

Step 4: Execute soak tests: Throughout the course of running the test suites, testers must steadily increase the system’s load while keeping an eye on its stability, performance, and resource usage.

Step 5: Analyze results and make a report: Testers assess if the system achieved the predetermined goals and whether any performance or other relevant issues were found when the tests were finished. They compile test results, performance metrics, and their own recommendations into a comprehensive report. After that, they distribute it to the pertinent parties so they can proceed.

When to do Soak Testing?

Performance issues should be tested at several stages. That’s why testing is important at different stages of the software development life cycle.

1. New software releases

Soak testing comes into play when releasing new software versions. After many functional and performance tests, soak testing helps to validate the software’s stability under heavy and long-term use, making sure that the software continues to perform optimally over time. This is especially important for software updates like security updates, adding new features, fixing bugs, and making changes. Soak testing ensures that these changes don’t introduce hidden performance issues.

2. System upgrades

Rinse testing should follow hardware and software upgrades. Rinse testing ensures that the upgraded system is able to withstand the continuous operational load. It also helps identify performance issues caused by new updates. It ensures that system upgrades do not disrupt the system’s stability.

3. Peak usage periods

During peak usage periods, such as tax season and major events, soak testing is important because the systems may see an increase in traffic. By running soak tests, development teams can anticipate the application’s performance under high load and identify any issues that may arise. This helps development teams optimize the systems so that they are able to handle large volumes of traffic without any problems while providing a great user experience during the peak usage period.

The Outcome of Soak Testing

The results of soak testing provide insights into the stability of your system or application over time under continuous use. It helps you spot potential problems like memory leakage, performance issues, and stability issues that may only show up after heavy usage. Developers can use the insights gained from soak testing to improve the stability and reliability of their software.

Conclusion

Soak testing offers many benefits if the correct tools and techniques are used at the right time. Brigita software solutions are focused on finding and solving the system’s problems, memory leaks, and other hidden issues for better performance.