Oversaturation of system resources occurs when the demand for a resource (e.g., CPU, memory, network bandwidth) exceeds its available capacity. According to fundamental principles of performance engineering and queuing theory, when a resource becomes saturated, incoming requests can no longer be processed immediately. They are forced to wait in a queue, leading to a significant and often non-linear increase in the time it takes to receive a response. This phenomenon is a primary focus of load and stress testing, where the goal is to identify the point at which performance degrades due to resource bottlenecks.

A. Response time will gradually improve over a period of time: This is incorrect. Resource saturation causes performance degradation, meaning response times increase (get slower), not improve.

C. Error logging will decrease: This is incorrect. Resource oversaturation often leads to system failures like timeouts or crashes, which would cause error logging to increase.

D. The size of the database will gradually decrease: This is incorrect. This is not a direct or typical consequence of resource saturation; high load is more likely to increase database size through transaction logging and data creation.

1. ISTQB® Certified Tester Performance Testing Syllabus v1.0.1 (2023)

Section 2.3.1

"Performance Test Types." The syllabus describes stress testing as a method to "evaluate how the system behaves when it is pushed beyond its specified limits." A key behavior observed under such conditions is performance degradation

including increased response times.

2. Jain

R. (1991). The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis: Techniques for Experimental Design

Measurement

Simulation

and Modeling. Wiley. Chapter 31

"Introduction to Queuing Theory

" explains that as the utilization of a server (a system resource) approaches 100% (saturation)

the queue length and waiting time for requests increase exponentially

directly causing slower response times. This is a foundational academic principle in computer performance analysis.

3. University of Toronto

ECE1770: "Performance Modeling of Computer Systems" Course Notes. These and similar university course materials on system performance explain that a system's response time (R) is a function of its service time and waiting time. As resource utilization (ρ) approaches 1

waiting time increases dramatically

thus increasing the overall response time. (e.g.

R = S / (1 - ρ) for an M/M/1 queue).