Volume Testing

Volume test shall check if there are any problems when running the system under test with realistic amounts of data, or even maximum or more. Volume test is necessary as ordinary function testing normally does not use large amounts of data, rather the opposite.

A special task is to check out real maximum amounts of data which are possible in extreme situations, for example on days with extremely large amounts of processing to be done (new year, campaigns, tax deadlines, disasters, etc.) Typical problems are full or nearly full disks, databases, files, buffers, counters which may lead to overflow. Maximal data amounts in communications may also be a concern.

Part of the test is to run the system over a certain time with a lot of data. This is in order to check what happens to temporary buffers and to timeouts due to long times for access. One variant of this test is using especially low volumes, such as empty databases or files, empty mails, no links etc. Some programs cannot handle this either.

One last variant is measuring how much space is needed by a program. This is important if a program is sharing resources with other ones. All programs taken together must not use more resources than available.