Stress testing
Stress testing is the one which looks for errors produced by low resources or competition for resources. Stress testing is used to attempt to exhaust limits for such resources as buffers, queues etc. Stress testing tries to break the system under test by overwhelming its resources or by taking resources away from it . The main purpose behind this madness is to make sure that the system fails and recovers gracefully - this quality is known as recoverability.
For a Web application, here are some ways in which stress can be applied to the system:
1. Double the baseline number for concurrent users/HTTP connections
2. Take the database offline, and then restart it
Also See:
Load Testing Tools
Stress Testing Examples
Difference between Load & Stress Testing
Excellent Performance Testing Articles
What is Load Testing
What is Performance Testing