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In stress testing the heavy burden is the expected volume of data that system can support (load testing) or is it more than that?

Information Management Online, October 1, 2007

Majid Abai

Question: Referring to the posting of August 2007: "Load testing is making sure that you can load the expected volumes of data. ... "Stress testing puts a heavy burden on your system to see if there are any stress" points." In stress testing the heavy burden is the "expected volume of data that system can support (load testing)" or is it more than that?

Majid Abai's Response: I actually differ on definition of load testing. In my opinion, load testing is to test the system with the expected size of data loaded. This means testing the load portion as well as the transformation, reports, analytics, etc. with the full size of data in the database and identify problems and opportunities for performance improvement.

Stress testing refers to pushing the limits of the system beyond the expected volumes to see the problems/opportunities. This means loading more than expected data, maximum number of users and/or all the processes running simultaneously.

Majid Abai is executive vice president and director of Information Management and SOA practices at Crescent Enterprise Solutions, a systems integration organization with 12 offices and 300 consultants across the United States. During the past 24 years, he has focused on providing enterprise IT and information strategies as well as implementation of major business systems to Fortune 2000 organizations and government offices. A number of his clients have been listed as the Top Information Management Organizations by Baseline Magazine.

Abai coauthored Data Strategy, a book published by Addison-Wesley, to provide a comprehensive road map in building a sound data strategy for organizations. He has developed and teaches classes at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Majid is a member of the Ask the Experts panel in DM Review magazine and a regular contributor to CIOupdate.com. He is continuously invited to consult and lecture on various information management and enterprise architecture subjects globally. You can reach him at majid.abai@crescententerprise.net.

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