There are various phases in software development life cycle (SDLC). Software performance testing is one of the most essential stages. There are different testing types and they are useful at different stages of the software development cycle. From the initial development of the application until it reaches the maketing phase different testing types will be used. In addition, all the different versions of the software have to be tested before they are delivered to either the costumer or the target market.

There are many different classes of software and software for web applications is one of them. With the advancements in Internet and its high impact on our day to day life, web software has achieved high importance in software industry and our daily lives. Because of the high impact Internet has on our daily lives any web software is carefully tested before launching in order to reduce the associated security risks that originate from the use of the Internet.

Even though the testing of web software is vital, there is at all times rush in building and testing those application due to time constraints.There are different methods that the test engineers use to test this software. They are code testing, [load testing], compatibility testing, functional testing and regression testing.

The web software is usually released by means of a model of software release known as alpha/beta testing.This is a simulated or actual operational test conducted by potential users or an independent test team at the developers’ site. This testing will be upon incomplete software and will be tested for small parts of the software. When of-the-self software is employed, alpha testing is often used as an internal acceptance test. Software that passed the alpha test will not be released till all the major functionalities of the software are built and tested.

After the alpha testing stage is finished, the software advances to the beta phase of testing. The web software should be fully completed by now. The software is released to a restricted number of users for testing before it is officially released. Since the web site design uses HTML coding, it’s easy to integrate individual web pages on site; hence the alpha/beta method is usually not used for website development This means they can build and test one page at a time. After completion they can move onto the next one, with each page independent of each other.

In code testing the software testing or development engineer examines the codes for software bugs. It’s essential for the software to be free of bugs because the web development process is very quick. Paired-programming is one of the popular methods used by highly qualified technicians to achieve error free coding .

The Paired programming is a method in software development where two programmers work simultaneously at one keyboard. The driver types in the code while the observer or navigator reviews each line. The judgment behind taking up this method is the following. The Economist proclaims that, “Laurie Williams of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City has shown that paired programmers are only 15% slower than two independent individual programmers, but produce 15% fewer bugs.”

As the development process continues the software is tested repeatedly. By the time it’s finally released the software is free of bugs. Load testing is performed against heavy loads or inputs such as multiple user log-ins and mail servers to determine the point at which the web-site/application fails or the point when performance degrades. The testing documents the number of users the site will support simultaneously, the number of transactions it can handle and its response time under various conditions or traffic flows.

Compatibility testing evaluates the application’s compatibility with the computing environment like the operating system, database, browser compatibility, backwards compatibility, computing capacity of the hardware platform and compatibility of the peripherals.

Functional testing asses the alignment between the application and its specifications checking that it provides all the required functions. To do that an extense range of both normal and erronous data will be imput to validate the behaviour caused by each of the software features Regression testing is performed to ensure that enhancements, defect repairs or other changes to the software have not disrupted any existing functionality.

Regression [testing] is very important whenever there’s iterative development of software. In this type of development, the developer adds another module with some functionality to the existing module that’s running. One should make sure that adding this module does not ruin the existing functionality. Regression testing is performed for the purpose of discovering regression bugs. The above tests are essential for completing web software testing.