What is the main goal of load testing?

Load testing primarily aims to evaluate application behavior under expected load conditions. This type of testing is crucial to determine how an application performs when subjected to various levels of demand, simulating real-world usage scenarios. By applying load testing, teams can identify potential bottlenecks, assess how the system handles concurrent users, and ensure that the application remains stable and responsive under peak usage.

This focus on performance under load enables organizations to make informed decisions about infrastructure, application scaling, and user experience, ensuring that the application can handle the expected volume of transactions without degradation in performance. Such an understanding helps in optimizing the application, preparing for user load, and ultimately delivering a reliable product to users.

The other options address different aspects of software quality. While security testing focuses on vulnerabilities, usability tests assess user experience, and code analysis deals with the structure and quality of the codebase, load testing's unique contribution is its emphasis on performance efficiency under load scenarios, making it an essential practice in application lifecycle management.