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Project Portal
| ### Next Steps Select and Run a Test Case |
| ### Patterns & Practices Testing .NET Application Performance |
| Activity: Write Stress Tests
Tester
|  |  |  | Test a Quality of Service Requirement |  |
|  | Participating Roles Responsible: Tester
### Overview Stress tests determine an application's breaking points and push the application past its upper limits as resources are saturated. They are used to identify the application's upper load boundaries where application response has degraded to an unacceptable level or the application has failed entirely. For example, the product may be run with a high load for a month to look for storage leaks or objects that should be garbage collected. Stress testing should occur as part of every iteration. A stress test is a type of performance test. Stress tests look at conditions that stress the application such as when maximum load conditions are exceeded for typical user scenarios or running the application for extended periods of time. They can be used to predict application behavior as maximum load conditions are exceeded. Stress tests can also be used to validate an application's stability and reliability by executing load testing over an extended period of time. # Entry Criteria Dependencies: A test task is assigned to perform a stress test. # Sub-Activities
1 | Understand the Objective of the Test | The objective of the stress test must be understood and the outcome of the test expressed in concrete terms such as an acceptable range of values.
2 | Design the Automated Test | Map out the test environment, test conditions including prerequisites, the number of virtual users, scenario being timed, and resources to be monitored. Understand the distribution of activities and simultaneous scenarios. Create stress test scenarios. Within a stress test scenario, create the test mix, load profile, and simulated environment. The test mix is comprised of the tasks that are performed and the frequency of the tasks. Do not insert think times or delay between tasks. In the load profile, determine how many users are tested in a constant or stepped load. Determine the simulated environment such as the network emulation speed and types of browsers used. Add any unit tests to simulate additional load. This is the unit test under load.
3 | Write the Test | Record the steps that users perform. Include validations to check that results returned are accurate under stress. Use data binding to make the tests dynamic using a .NET data source such as SQL Server, Microsoft Excel, or Microsoft Access. Place the test in the test folder of the stress quality of service requirement. Create a test folder if it does not exist, naming it the same name as the quality of service requirement. Check in the test.
# Exit Criteria
| The stress tests written have been reviewed and checked in.
| The stress tests verify that the quality of service requirements are met.
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