Software Quality Assurance Practice Exam

What aspect of software quality does stability testing specifically assess?

1. Code efficiency

2. Error detection rates

3. Application performance under load

4. Application's resilience to crashes

The correct answer is: Application's resilience to crashes

Stability testing primarily focuses on evaluating an application's resilience to crashes and its ability to maintain expected performance over extended periods of usage. This type of testing is designed to determine how well the software behaves under various conditions, particularly when subjected to prolonged operation, peak loads, or stress scenarios. The goal is to identify any issues that could cause unexpected failures or crashes. By assessing the application’s stability, testers can ensure that it can handle user demands without critical errors or downtimes. This aspect is crucial for software systems that need to operate consistently and reliably, especially in production environments. While other options address important elements of software quality, they do not specifically target the core purpose of stability testing. For instance, code efficiency relates to how well the code performs in terms of resource usage, error detection rates focus on finding defects, and application performance under load assesses the responsiveness and speed under stress, but none are as directly pertinent to stability as the application's resilience to crashes is.