Stress testing
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Stress testing is a form of testing that is used to determine the stability of a given system or entity. It involves testing beyond normal operational capacity, often to a breaking point, in order to observe the results.
In the 'IT industry':
- A web server, for example, may be stress tested using scripts, bots, and various denial of service tools to observe the performance of a web site during peak loads.
- Branch coverage is a metric of the number of branches executed under test, where "100% branch coverage" means that every branch in a program has been executed at least once under some test.
In a 'medical' context:
- A Cardiac stress test is used most commonly to detect marked imbalances in blood flow to the heart muscle.
In the 'financial sector':
- Instead of doing financial projection on a "best estimate" basis, a company may do stress testing where they look at how robust a financial instrument is in certain crashes. They may test the instrument under, for example, the following stresses:
- What happens if the market crashes by more than x% this year?
- What happens if interest rates go up by at least y%?
- What if half the instruments in the portfolio terminate their contacts in the 5th year?
