Software testing topics

Scope

A primary purpose of testing is to detect software failures so that defects may be discovered and corrected. This is a non-trivial pursuit. Testing cannot establish that a product functions properly under all conditions but can only establish that it does not function properly under specific conditions. The scope of software testing often includes examination of code as well as execution of that code in various environments and conditions as well as examining the aspects of code: does it do what it is supposed to do and do what it needs to do. In the current culture of software development, a testing organization may be separate from the development team. There are various roles for testing team members. Information derived from software testing may be used to correct the process by which software is developed.

Functional vs non-functional testing

Functional testing refers to activities that verify a specific action or function of the code. These are usually found in the code requirements documentation, although some development methodologies work from use cases or user stories. Functional tests tend to answer the question of "can the user do this" or "does this particular feature work".

Non-functional testing refers to aspects of the software that may not be related to a specific function or user action, such as scalability or security. Non-functional testing tends to answer such questions as "how many people can log in at once".

Defects and failures

Not all software defects are caused by coding errors. One common source of expensive defects is caused by requirement gaps, e.g., unrecognized requirements, that result in errors of omission by the program designer. A common source of requirements gaps is non-functional requirements such as testability, scalability, maintainability, usability, performance, and security.

Software faults occur through the following processes. A programmer makes an error (mistake), which results in a defect (fault, bug) in the software source code. If this defect is executed, in certain situations the system will produce wrong results, causing a failure.^[15] Not all defects will necessarily result in failures. For example, defects in dead code will never result in failures. A defect can turn into a failure when the environment is changed. Examples of these changes in environment include the software being run on a new hardware platform, alterations in source data or interacting with different software.^[15] A single defect may result in a wide range of failure symptoms.

Finding faults early

It is commonly believed that the earlier a defect is found the cheaper it is to fix it. The following table shows the cost of fixing the defect depending on the stage it was found. For example, if a problem in the requirements is found only post-release, then it would cost 10–100 times more to fix than if it had already been found by the requirements review.

Cost to fix a defect		Time detected
		Requirements	Architecture	Construction	System test	Post-release
Time introduced	Requirements	1×	3×	5–10×	10×	10–100×
	Architecture	-	1×	10×	15×	25–100×
	Construction	-	-	1×	10×	10–25×

Compatibility

A common cause of software failure (real or perceived) is a lack of compatibility with other application software, operating systems (or operating system versions, old or new), or target environments that differ greatly from the original (such as a terminal or GUI application intended to be run on the desktop now being required to become a web application, which must render in a web browser). For example, in the case of a lack of backward compatibility, this can occur because the programmers develop and test software only on the latest version of the target environment, which not all users may be running. This results in the unintended consequence that the latest work may not function on earlier versions of the target environment, or on older hardware that earlier versions of the target environment was capable of using. Sometimes such issues can be fixed by proactively abstracting operating system functionality into a separate program module or library.

Input combinations and preconditions

A very fundamental problem with software testing is that testing under all combinations of inputs and preconditions (initial state) is not feasible, even with a simple product.^[12][18] This means that the number of defects in a software product can be very large and defects that occur infrequently are difficult to find in testing. More significantly, non-functional dimensions of quality (how it is supposed to be versus what it is supposed to do)—usability, scalability, performance, compatibility, reliability—can be highly subjective; something that constitutes sufficient value to one person may be intolerable to another.

Static vs. dynamic testing

There are many approaches to software testing. Reviews, walkthroughs, or inspections are considered as static testing, whereas actually executing programmed code with a given set of test cases is referred to as dynamic testing. Static testing can be (and unfortunately in practice often is) omitted. Dynamic testing takes place when the program itself is used for the first time (which is generally considered the beginning of the testing stage). Dynamic testing may begin before the program is 100% complete in order to test particular sections of code (modules or discrete functions). Typical techniques for this are either using stubs/drivers or execution from a debugger environment. For example, spreadsheet programs are, by their very nature, tested to a large extent interactively ("on the fly"), with results displayed immediately after each calculation or text manipulation.

Software verification and validation

Software testing is used in association with verification and validation:

• Verification: Have we built the software right? (i.e., does it match the specification).
• Validation: Have we built the right software? (i.e., is this what the customer wants).

The terms verification and validation are commonly used interchangeably in the industry; it is also common to see these two terms incorrectly defined. According to the IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology:

Verification is the process of evaluating a system or component to determine whether the products of a given development phase satisfy the conditions imposed at the start of that phase.

Validation is the process of evaluating a system or component during or at the end of the development process to determine whether it satisfies specified requirements.

The software testing team

Software testing can be done by software testers. Until the 1980s the term "software tester" was used generally, but later it was also seen as a separate profession. Regarding the periods and the different goals in software testing, different roles have been established: manager, test lead, test designer, tester, automation developer, and test administrator.

Software quality assurance (SQA)

Though controversial, software testing may be viewed as an important part of the software quality assurance (SQA) process. In SQA, software process specialists and auditors take a broader view on software and its development. They examine and change the software engineering process itself to reduce the amount of faults that end up in the delivered software: the so-called defect rate.

What constitutes an "acceptable defect rate" depends on the nature of the software; A flight simulator video game would have much higher defect tolerance than software for an actual airplane.

Although there are close links with SQA, testing departments often exist independently, and there may be no SQA function in some companies.

Software testing is a task intended to detect defects in software by contrasting a computer program's expected results with its actual results for a given set of inputs. By contrast, QA (quality assurance) is the implementation of policies and procedures intended to prevent defects from occurring in the first place.