Scalability testing

Scalability Testing, part of the battery of non-functional tests, is the testing of a software application for measuring its capability to scale up or scale out - in terms of any of its non-functional capability - be it the user load supported, the number of transactions, the data volume etc.

Performance, scalability and reliability are usually considered together by software quality analysts.

Tools

Scalability testing tools exist (oftentimes leveraging scalable resources themselves) in order to test load, concurrent connections, transactions, and throughput of many internet services. Of the available testing services, those offering API support suggest that environment of continuous deployment also continuously test how recent changes may impact scalability.

Commonly used tools include:

• SOASTA

Further reading

• Designing Distributed Applications with Visual Studio .NET: Scalability