Software Testing Types

WHAT KINDS OF TESTING SHOULD BE CONSIDERED?

1. Black box testing: not based on any knowledge of internal design or code.Tests are based on requirements and functionality
2. White box testing: based on knowledge of the internal logic of an application’s code. Tests are based on coverage of code statements, branches, paths, and conditions.
3. Unit testing: the most ‘micro’ scale of testing; to test particular functions or code modules. Typically done by the programmer and not by testers, as it requires detailed knowledge of the internal program design and code. Not always easily done unless the application has a well-designed architecture with tight code; may require developing test driver modules or test harnesses.
4. Incremental integration testing: continuous testing of an application as new functionality is added; requires that various aspects of an applications functionality be independent enough to work separately before all parts of the program are completed, or that test drivers be developed as needed; done by programmers or by testers.
6. Integration testing: testing of combined parts of an application to determine if they function together correctly the ‘parts’ can be code modules, individual applications, client and server applications on a networked. This type of testing is especially relevant to client/server and distributed systems.
7. Functional testing: black-box type testing geared to functional requirements of an application; testers should do this type of testing. This does not mean that the programmers should not check their code works before releasing it(which of course applies to any stage of testing).
8. System testing: black –box type testing that is based on overall requirements specifications; covers all combined parts of system.
9. End to end testing: similar to system testing; the ‘macro’ end of the test scale; involves testing of a complete application environment in a situation that mimics real-world use, such as interacting with database, using network communications, or interacting with other hardware, applications, or systems if appropriate.
10. Sanity testing: typically an initial testing effort to determine if a new software version is performing well enough to accept it for a major testing effort. For example, if the new software is crashing systems every 5minutes warrant further testing in item current state.
11. Regression testing: re-testing after fixes or modifications of the software or its environment. It can be difficult to determine how much re-testing is needed, especially near the end of the development cycle. Automated testing tools can be especially useful for this type of testing.
12. Acceptance testing: final testing based on specifications of the end-user or customer, or based on use by end users/customers over some limited period of time.
13. Load testing: testing an application under heavy loads, such as testing of a web site under a range of loads to determine at what point the system’s response time degrades or fails.
14. Stress testing: term often used interchangeably with ‘load’ and ‘performance’ testing. Also used to describe such tests as system functional testing while under unusually heavy loads, heavy repletion of certain actions or inputs input of large numerical values, large complex queries to a database system, etc.
15. Performance testing: term often used interchangeable with ‘stress’ and ‘load’ testing. Ideally ‘performance’ testing (and another ‘type’ of testing) is defined in requirements documentation or QA or test plans.
16. Usability testing: testing for ‘user-friendlinesses’. Clearly this is subjective,and will depend on the targeted end-ser or customer. User interviews, surveys, video recording of user sessions, and other techniques can be used programmers and testers are usually not appropriate as usability testers.
17. Install/uninstall testing: testing of full, partial, or upgrade install/uninstall processes.
18. Recovery testing: testing how well a system recovers from crashes, hardware failures or other catastrophic problems.
19. Security testing: testing how well system protects against unauthorized internal or external access, damage, etc, any require sophisticated testing techniques.
20. Compatibility testing: testing how well software performs in a particular hardware/software/operating/system/network/etc environment.
21. Exploratory testing: often taken to mean a creative, informal software test that is not based on formal test plans of test cases; testers may be learning the software as they test it.
22. Ad-hoc testing: similar to exploratory testing, but often taken to mean that the testers have significant understanding of the software testing it.
23. User acceptance testing: determining if software is satisfactory to an end-user or customer.
24. Comparison testing: comparing software weakness and strengths to competing products.
25. Alpha testing: testing of an application when development is nearing completion; minor design changes may still be made as a result of such testing. Typically done by end-users or others, not by programmers or testers.
26. Beta testing: testing when development and testing are essentially completed and final bugs and problems need to be found before final release. Typically done by end-users or others, not by programmers or testers.
27. Mutation testing: method for determining if a set of test data or test cases is useful, by deliberately introducing various code changes (‘bugs’) and retesting with the original test data/cases to determine if the ‘bugs’ are detected proper implementation requires large computational resources.

Difference between client server testing and web server testing.
Web systems are one type of client/server. The client is the browser, the server is whatever is on the back end (database, proxy, mirror, etc). This differs from so-called “traditional” client/server in a few ways but both systems are a type of client/server. There is a certain client that connects via some protocol with a server (or set of servers).

Also understand that in a strict difference based on how the question is worded, “testing a Web server” specifically is simply testing the functionality and performance of the Web server itself. (For example, I might test if HTTP Keep-Alives are enabled and if that works. Or I might test if the logging feature is working. Or I might test certain filters, like ISAPI. Or I might test some general characteristics such as the load the server can take.) In the case of “client server testing”, as you have worded it, you might be doing the same general things to some other type of server, such as a database server. Also note that you can be testing the server directly, in some cases, and other times you can be testing it via the interaction of a client.

You can also test connectivity in both. (Anytime you have a client and a server there has to be connectivity between them or the system would be less than useful so far as I can see.) In the Web you are looking at HTTP protocols and perhaps FTP depending upon your site and if your server is configured for FTP connections as well as general TCP/IP concerns. In a “traditional” client/server you may be looking at sockets, Telnet, NNTP, etc.

What’s the difference between load and stress testing?
One of the most common, but unfortunate misuse of terminology is treating “load testing” and “stress testing” as synonymous. The consequence of this ignorant semantic abuse is usually that the system is neither properly “load tested” nor subjected to a meaningful stress test.

1. Stress testing is subjecting a system to an unreasonable load while denying it the resources (e.g., RAM, disc, mips, interrupts,etc.) needed to process that load. The idea is to stress a system to the breaking point in order to find bugs that will make that break potentially harmful. The system is not expected to process the overload without adequate resources, but to behave (e.g., fail) in a decent manner (e.g., not corrupting or losing data). Bugs and failure modes discovered under stress testing may or may not be repaired depending on the application, the failure mode, consequences, etc. The load (incoming transaction stream) in stress testing is often deliberately distorted so as to force the system into resource depletion.

2. Load testing is subjecting a system to a statistically representative (usually) load. The two main reasons for using such loads is in support of software reliability testing and in performance testing. The term “load testing” by itself is too vague and imprecise to warrant use. For example, do you mean representative load,” “overload,” “high load,” etc. In performance testing, load is varied from a minimum (zero) to the maximum level the system can sustain without running out of resources or having, transactions suffer (application-specific) excessive delay.

3. A third use of the term is as a test whose objective is to determine the maximum sustainable load the system can handle. In this usage, “load testing” is merely testing at the highest transaction arrival rate in performance testing.

Q.What is difference between client server and Web Testing?
Vijay: Well Srividya I would like to add one more testing type i.e Desktop Testing in this discussion. So now we have three testing types Desktop application testing, Client server application testing and Web application testing.

Each one differs in the environment in which they are tested and you will lose control over the environment in which application you are testing, while you move from desktop to web applications.

Desktop application runs on personal computers and work stations, so when you test the desktop application you are focusing on a specific environment. You will test complete application broadly in categories like GUI, functionality, Load, and backend i.e DB.

In client server application you have two different components to test. Application is loaded on server machine while the application exe on every client machine. You will test broadly in categories like, GUI on both sides, functionality, Load, client-server interaction, backend. This environment is mostly used in Intranet networks. You are aware of number of clients and servers and their locations in the test scenario.

Web application is a bit different and complex to test as tester don’t have that much control over the application. Application is loaded on the server whose location may or may not be known and no exe is installed on the client machine, you have to test it on different web browsers. Web applications are supposed to be tested on different browsers and OS platforms so broadly Web application is tested mainly for browser compatibility and operating system compatibility, error handling, static pages, backend testing and load testing.

I think this will have an idea of all three testing environment. Keep in mind that even the difference exist in these three environment, the basic quality assurance and testing principles remains same and applies to all.