Storage Testing

[bvani]

Hi all
Can any one tell me what these terms mean - storage testing, data volume testing. How and on what basis do we write test cases for these? How do we implement them manually or with any of the automation tools?

[smganesh]

Hi Vani,

I think both storage testing & volume testing are one and the same.

Volume testing means testing the behaviour of the application on huge amount of data. e.g.,
01. MS-Access cannot handle data more than 2 GB. After that, it behaves abnormal.
02. SQL Server 2000 may not handle data more than 400 GB

Oracle 10g can handle huge data (even in tera bytes) using grid technology.

Please let me know in case of any issue.

Regards,
Ganesh

[sutnarcha]

Storage Testing (ST) could be different from Data Volume Testing (DVT)

While the DVT is rightly defined above by “smganesh” the ST could be how the data is being stored in the database by the application.

Some applications work a little or more on the data entered (especially memo type, bitmap type etc) by the user before storing it in the database. In doing so, some s/w systems spoil the data entered. The same thing happens when retrieving such data from the database. If it is not stored properly, it can’t be retrieved properly either.

So, ST is to test if the system rightly stores and retrieves such data from the database.

[riteshvado]

I am not sure what exactly is storage testing but DVT (data volume testing) is something where you test your application for huge volume of data. Some examples are :-

1> Let say the application relies on file for data then testing it with huge (> 2GB for Large FIle support) data files becomes your test focus.

2> If the application interacts with DB then populating DB with huge volume of data becomes your focus. Generally when application talks to DB they go via some stored procs . Test case preparation should involve finding out the stored procs and what they do. By finiding out what they do( business implications) you can actually map it to your application and should be able to decide that for testing this stored proc what is the required maximum volume of data.
Once you decide the volume of data you can use various mechanism to add this data in your applicaiton's DB directly. Using scripting language or some tool should help you in doing this.

Now as part of test cases you can directly run the procs or you use some util to call those procs and find out the accuracy of output and response time from DB.