General performance metrics
Benchmarking is a small part of performance testing. The main focus of performance testing is checking software:
- Speed: To determine how fast the application responds
- Scalability: To determine the maximum number of users that an application can handle
- Stability: To determine how the application invokes its functions under different loads
Types of performance testing
The most common performance problems revolve around response time, speed, load time, and scalability. These issues impact the most important attribute of an application: speed. Therefore, the main purpose of performance testing is to make sure that your application runs fast enough to keep a user's attention. There are a lot of different types of performance testing, for instance:
- Benchmark testing (we're already familiar with this)
- Load testing, which determines how an application works under anticipated user loads
- Volume testing, which tests what happens when a large amount of data populates a database
- Scalability...