The purpose of a soak test is to reveal performance problems that surface only over a long period of time. Soak testing highlights issues such as:
- A constant degradation in response time when the system is run over time.
- Deteriorations in system resources that aren't evident during short runs, but will surface when a test is run for a longer time.
- Any periodical process that may affect the performance of the system, but which can only be detected during a prolonged system run.