Volume testing refers to testing a software application with a certain amount of data to assert the system performance with a certain amount of data in the database.
Volume testing is regarded by some as a type of capacity testing,[1] and is often deemed necessary as other types of tests normally don't use large amounts of data, but rather typically use small amounts of data.
[1] It is the only type of test which checks the ability of a system to handle large pools of data.
[2] For example, the test can be used to stress the database to its maximum limit.
For example, if one wants to volume test an application with a specific database size, the database will be expanded to that size and the application's performance will then be tested on it.