Benchmark Testing in Software Testing

Prerequisite: Software testing

Every developed software application passes through functional testing and non functional testing to ensure that it satisfies the business requirements. Not only business requirements are observed but also all the performance standards like product behavior, speed, functionality, stability, scalability, reliability, load capacity, and performance under stress, etc. are monitored. Benchmark testing is a part of the performance testing. So now let’s go deeper to know more about this benchmark testing.

Benchmark Testing

Benchmark testing is considered part of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) which compares performance testing results against performance metrics to determine current performance and any changes needed to improve performance. It covers software, hardware, and network performance. Mainly it focuses on present and future releases of a software product/service to maintain high-quality standards.

A benchmark must be repeatable as well as quantifiable in terms of determining the performance of the product/service. For example, a product’s response time needs to be stable amongst different load conditions which refers to repeatable benchmarks, and the user spending how much time on a product, within how much time getting the actual service refers to a quantifiable benchmark.

For example, here we will take two cases of benchmark testing. Let there be a web application and we will see what are the benchmark components for database performance of web application and client server application of web.

Components that are Benchmarked in the case of the database

• Table Space Configurations
• Hardware Configurations
• SQL Queries
• SQL Triggers
• SQL Indexes
• Networks
• Firewalls

Components that are Benchmarked in case of client-server

• Accessibility
• Browser compatibility
• Broken Links
• Load Time
• HTML compliance

Importance of Benchmark Testing

1. For performance analysis of a software product/service with competitors.
2. It is essential for implementing quality standards for software product.
3. It is essential for implementing SLAs (Service Level Agreements).
4. It is essential to practically establish user/customer experience.
5. It allows us to point out the mistakes to be avoided.
6. It allows us to determine current performance and any changes needed to improve performance.

Phases of Benchmark Test

Benchmark test involves four phases i.e.,

1. Planning Phase – This phase involves identifying defining and prioritizing standards and requirements. The benchmark test process is defined and different benchmark metrics are decided.
2. Analysis Phase – This phase involves setting the goals and objectives identifying the errors and resolving them to get a quality product.
3. Integration Phase – This phase involves the agreement between functional and non-functional requirements and sharing outcomes with the concerned business in getting approval.
4. Action Phase – This phase involves developing the test plan and documentation, implementing the performance tests, measuring the performance, calculating results, and running the process continuously.

Along with this there are four benchmark testing techniques phases i.e.,

1. Benchmark preparation
2. Benchmark test creation
3. Benchmark test execution
4. Benchmark test analysis

Advantages of Benchmark testing

• Performance Improvement
• Changed focus
• No extra cost incurred
• Identification of essential activities
• It helps to check the mobile and tablet devices as well.
• It checks the efficiency of the application.
• It is useful for the development team as well.
• Helps in analyzing and finding the system attacks against Firewalls or other attacks.

Disadvantages of Benchmark testing

• Standard stability
• Increased dependency
• An accurate testing tool needs to be used for executing the test cases.
• Test plans need to be prepared well to avoid any discrepancies during actual test execution.
• A tester needs to have a strong understanding of the system to cover all the end-to-end scenarios in benchmark testing.