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Software Testing

Types of Software Testing

The below listed are types of software testing that are used predominantly used in most of the Organization.

Types of Software Testing
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In this blog it is assumed that we know the importance of testing thus, for now, it’s time to understand what are all the different software testing types that are available and when to use what. A proper test plan must have documentation and the timelines of each type of testing alongside the description. The three major classifications based on the mode of execution are:

White/clear box testing

White box testing talks about the testing conducted at a technical and very low level. This testing is to validate the structure, design, and implementation of the system. Writing the unit tests, integration tests also designing scripts at the system level is part of this classification.

This type of testing is done by understanding the source code. The objective of this testing is to validate all part of the source code like decision branch, loop and statement are verified.

Unit testing which is done by developer is a part of White box testing.

Black box testing

This is solely the functional validation done by the manual functional testing. These tests are designed by understanding the requirement then execute them manually then verify the results. The test coverage techniques used in this process are to ensure the test coverage is high with not taking overhead of documenting too many repetitive tests.

The testers who do this type of testing will not conduct code review / assess the code coverage/statements etc. They don’t have any understanding of what code is written. But they are executed and functionally validated to ensure that Application does what is expected out of it.

Grey box testing

This is a blended mix of both white box as well as the black box testing. In this, we try to cover both the strategies. A tester who does this Grey box testing has partial knowledge of code. Predominantly they execute a function written with different functions input and assess the quality of function.

The black box testing can further be divided into three major types

Functional testing

In this testing type, our focus is to validate the functionality by understanding the requirement. This is a simulation of a user test. The intention of this test is to determine whether the product built-in right fashion.

This functional testing is further classified into a few types they are

Smoke testing

This is a build verification test, once the development gives build its essential to execute the most common scenarios that are needed to confirm the given revision of build is a good candidate for further testing.

Sanity testing

Sanity test is a prioritized test, if at all the timelines given and the amount of testing to be done are unparalleled then we pick the edge cases and the most priority test cases to deem the sanity of a build. Ideally speaking this is a subset of regression testing.

Adhoc testing

This is a functional test without any concrete plan, based on the experience we have developed on the application front we execute the scenarios.

Non-functional testing

In this testing alongside validating the functionality we mainly focus on testing the performance of an application by subjecting that to a specific load as determined. It’s not just limited to the performance we validate so many other characteristics of applications. The types of Non-Functional testing done are

Performance testing

It helps to assess the stability of software under a certain workload

Volume testing

It helps to test the software with a huge volume of data and assess the response of the Software to huge volume.

Load testing

When a huge load of data is given to a program, how it handles the load. Huge Spike is given in a short span of time and understands how it handles.

Security testing

When some vulnerability is injected into the system under test, how it handles such condition. It is to validate if it is able to recover from such vulnerability. It is predominantly used to test the application whether it is free from any threat or risk.

Localization testing

When we declare an application has multi-lingual support, we need to perform Localization testing to ensure whether the application is able to display pages/content in the current local language. Here all the links and contents are validated to ensure that content is designed to specific to that local language.

Compatibility testing

When we publish software, we declare on what all different hardware, Operating system, network, browsers, devices, etc it will support. This will be a part of the release notes. We need to ensure sunder such conditions this software supports without any issue. Testing done to validate on different hardware, Operating system, devices, etc are called compatibility testing.

Endurance testing / Soak Testing

A specific load is given to the Application for a prolonged period of time to assess system performance/behavior.

Regression testing

Regression testing is conducted to ensure, the code fixes have not caused any new breakage of the application in some other place. In this test instead of running the failed case alone, we run all the test cases that were passed before to confirm the presence or absence of defects. Regression testing helps us to find the stability of the applications as we pass by the timelines.

This test should be run with an agreed frequency to ensure that the addition of new functionality, integration of any other new component and any bug fixes have not affected any other existing system functionalities.

Levels of software testing

In the process of the software development life cycle, we have corresponding testing phase involved. The ideology is to conduct testing at different levels to ensure the functionality and we don’t deviate from the process. When we discuss the levels of testing, we don’t specifically limit the scope to the testing phase, rather we discuss the kind of testing done at every phase of SDLC and here it could be the fact that many teams intervention might be observed. Following are the different levels of testing that we conduct in SDLC process.

Unit testing

This is the first low-level test that’s conducted by the developer. In this testing, we test only the particular component for its working condition also the developer has to ensure the proper statement, decision and path coverage was done with reference to the requirement built. If unit tests are failed developer has to look into the problem and fix them immediately as no further testing can be unless this is completed successfully.

Integration testing

This is the next phase of unit testing, in this level of testing we focus on the integration that is established between the modules and check whether the services give proper requests and responses. This is done by both testing team development team. Integration tests, in general, are kind of API tests as the whole system not ready yet. We have two more subcategories of these tests based on the unavailability of a specific master or slave module.

Top down approach

This approach is adopted when any slave or listener component in the application is not available for testing but we need to conduct testing to meet the deadline. In this case whatever the module that’s not available yet would get replaced by a stub. The stub is a simulating system, which acts as the regular component that we should have got ideally in place.

Bottom down approach

It’s the reciprocal process of the above-mentioned one. If at all the master component or service is not ready to test and we have to test the other components then the master component would get replaced by a dummy driver system. Although the driver is not a real system we will give the power to drive the other components as per the need.

System testing

This testing is done once the whole system is made available, the focus of the test is to validate within the system. All possible scenarios and customer use cases must be thoroughly tested. This is the most prioritized official test as we learn a lot of bugs and also this is the level where we see the system turns out to be a reliable one.

System integration testing

This level of testing is conducted when the complete end to end connectivity of the application with all possible external downstream/ upstream systems was connected. This is the real time test where the test replicates the usage of the customer flow once the application gets launched.

User acceptance testing

Use acceptance test is conducted by the customer or product owner. This is the final verification test that’s performed before the application goes live. This test builds confidence in the business as to whether or not the reliability criteria that’s set was met and application is good to be launched. This is again classified into two sorts based on the environment where it’s conducted. The rationale behind doing this test at two sites is to isolate any external parameters that are actually intervening in the results we observe. This will rather help to pin down certain problems and root cause the problems.

Alpha testing

This test is done at the actual test team sites to understand the results. All observations are made a note to compare against with other types of the UAT testing.

Beta testing

This test is done at the customer sight, after the execution the results are compared to understand and conclude

1. If the same problems have occurred.

2. The problems observed at one’s sight are due to the improper or slow infrastructure and not of the application.

Conclusion:

The above listed are types of testing that are used predominantly used in most of the Organization. There are some special testing conducted for specific needs like to test Gaming Application, different techniques, and testing types will be used. But this blog extensively covers the testing type which is for testing the most common type of Applications which covers 80% of the Organization requirement. Thanks for reading this blog.

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