SOFTWARE TESTING TYPES
Testing is the most important component of software development and delivery. There are more than 50 different types of testing techniques used in enterprise softwares. Some of those testing techniques are compulsory but others are nice to have. These testing techniques depend upon the nature of the software product, the type of software architecture used to build that product (distributed, cloud-based, microservices, monolith..), and organizational or business constraints and needs.
Testing can be time-consuming initially but eventually, it helps improve software quality and reduces the time new features are pushed to market. Testing is a highly important component feature of the DevOps pipeline which can make softwares more valuable and scalable.
Test-Driven Development
Test-Driven Development, or TDD, is a code design technique where the programmer writes a test before any production code, and then writes the code that will make that test pass. The idea is that with a tiny bit of assurance from that initial test, the programmer can feel free to refactor and refactor some more to get the cleanest code they know how to write. The idea is simple, but like most simple things, the execution is hard. TDD requires a completely different mindset from what most people are used to and the tenacity to deal with a learning curve that may slow you down at first.
TYPES OF SOFTWARES
- Cloud-Based Systems - Google Docs or Office 365?is a paradigmatic example of a cloud application. To access Google Docs or Office 365, you need nothing more than a machine capable of running a web browser and an internet connection. The interface and all the functionality, including data storage, are delivered from remote servers
- BigData Applications - Big data software is?used to extract information from a large number of data sets and process these complex data. A large amount of data is very difficult to process in traditional databases. so that's why we can use this tool and manage our data very easily.
- Functions as a Service - Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) is a?serverless way to execute modular pieces of code on the edge. FaaS lets developers write and update a piece of code on the fly, which can then be executed in response to an event, such as a user clicking on an element in a web application.
- Microservices Applications - Microservices is?an architectural design for building a distributed application using containers. They get their name because each function of the application operates as an independent service. This architecture allows for each service to scale or update without disrupting other services in the application.
- Multi-Layered Architecture - Multi-layered software architecture is one of the most popular architectural patterns today. It moderates the increasing complexity of modern applications. It also makes it easier to work in a more agile manner.?
- Monolith Architecture - A monolithic architecture is?the traditional unified model for the design of a software program. Monolithic, in this context, means composed all in one piece. In a tightly-coupled architecture, each component and its associated components must be present in order for code to be executed or compiled.
- Component-Based Architecture - A Component Architecture is?an architecture based on replaceable components as described in Concept: Component. Because Component Architectures are based on independent, replaceable, modular components, they help to manage complexity and encourage re-use.
- Cloud-Native Applications - Cloud-native architecture is a design methodology that utilizes cloud services such as EC2, S3, Lambda from AWS, etc to allow dynamic and agile application development techniques?that take a modular approach to build, run, and update the software through a suite of cloud-based microservices versus a monolithic application infrastructure.
- Enterprise systems - Enterprise systems are?large-scale software packages?that are able to track and control all of the complex operations of a business. These systems are used as a central command hub to help automate the business and make reporting and decision-making easier.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF TESTING
PRE-PRODUCTION: Tests that happen in lower environments.
- Unit Testing - Frequently, unit testing is considered part of the programming phase, with the person that wrote the program.
- Static Analysis - Static analysis is a powerful tool to ensure software quality and robustness and can find a number of issues in code before execution.
- Functional Testing- Functional testing mainly involves black box testing and it is not concerned about the source code of the application. This testing checks User Interface, APIs, Database, Security, Client/Server communication, and other functionality of the Application Under Test. The testing can be done either manually or using automation.
- Smoke Testing - Smoke Testing?is a software testing process that determines whether the deployed software build is stable or not. Smoke testing is a confirmation for the QA team to proceed with further software testing. It consists of a minimal set of tests run on each build to test software functionalities. Smoke testing is also known as “Build Verification Testing” or “Confidence Testing.
- Component Testing - Component testing is also known as a module and program testing. It finds the issues?in the module and verifies the functioning of the software.
- Property-based Testing - Property-based tests are designed to test?the aspects of a property that should always be true. They allow for a range of inputs to be programmed and tested within a single test, rather than having to write a different test for every value that you want to test.?
- Benchmark Testing - Benchmark Testing?measures a repeatable set of quantifiable results that serves as a point of reference against which products/services can be compared. The purpose of benchmark testing results is to compare the present and future software releases with their respective benchmarks.
- Regression Testing - Regression testing is a software testing practice that ensures an application still functions as expected after any code changes, updates, or improvements Regression testing is responsible for the overall stability and functionality of the existing features.
- Contract Testing - Contract testing has been around the same time as that of microservices, and there is a link between them. Microservices architecture with its distributed nature follows contract testing as its crucial?testing?step. In recent years microservices have gained popularity and hence contract testing is also gaining popularity.
- Fuzz Testing - Fuzz Testing or Fuzzing is a software testing technique of putting invalid or random data called FUZZ into a software system to discover coding errors and security loopholes. The purpose of fuzz testing is inserting data using automated or semi-automated techniques and testing the system for various exceptions like system crashing or failure of built-in code, etc.
- Acceptance Testing - Acceptance Testing is a method of software testing where a system is tested for acceptability. The major aim of this test is to evaluate the compliance of the system with the business requirements and assess whether it is acceptable for delivery or not.
DEPLOYMENT: Tests are done after a new deployment to a specific environment
- Integration Tests - Integration testing?is defined as a type of testing where software modules are integrated logically and tested as a group. A typical software project consists of multiple software modules, coded by different programmers. The purpose of this level of testing is to expose defects in the interaction between these integrated software modules.
- Tap Compare - Tap compare is a testing technique that allows you to test the behavior and performance of the new service by comparing its results against the old service. However, it can help you detect regressions so that you can feel more confident about the quality of the new version of the developed service.?
- Load Tests - Load Testing?is a non-functional software testing process in which the performance of the software applications is tested under a specific expected load. It determines how the software application behaves while being accessed by multiple users simultaneously. The goal of Load Testing is to improve performance bottlenecks and to ensure stability and smooth functioning of the software application before deployment.
- Traffic Shadowing - Traffic shadowing is a deployment pattern where production traffic is asynchronously copied to a non-production service for testing. Shadow testing?replicates traffic of the production to the candidate environment for testing, so you get the same production use case scenarios in the test environment. You can compare differences in both environments and validate your candidate environment to be ready for release.
- Configuration Testing - Configuration Testing?is a software testing technique in which the software application is tested with multiple combinations of software and hardware in order to evaluate the functional requirements and find out optimal configurations under which the software application works without any defects or flaws.
RELEASE: Tests done after a new release to a specific environment
- Canary Testing Approach - Canary Testing is a way to reduce risk and validate new software by releasing software to a small percentage of users. With canary testing, you can deliver to certain groups of users at a time. Also referred to as canary deployments, incremental, staged, or phased rollouts, canary releases are a best practice in DevOps and Software Development.
- Traffic Shaping - Traffic shaping (also known as packet shaping) is?a bandwidth management technique that delays the flow of certain types of network packets in order to ensure network performance for higher priority applications.
- Feature Flagging - A feature flag, or feature toggle, is?a software development tool used to safely activate or deactivate features for testing in production, gradual release, experimentation, and operations.
- Exception Tracking - Exception Tracking tools monitor errors thrown by running applications. Usually, exception objects contain information about exception type, message, stack trace, and line number where the error occurs. It also tells the number of occurrences and much more information about the issue like a null pointer exception, no method error, or network timeouts.
POST RELEASE: Tests done after a new release to a specific environment has been done
- A/B Tests - A/B testing is essentially an experiment where two or more variants of a page are shown to users at random, and?statistical analysis is used to determine which variation performs better for a given conversion goal.
- Logs/Events - In software testing, the analysis of logs is designed to check and monitor the application's work. Also, logs help to fix some errors. Logs are?the text lines that include the time and name of particular operations that occur in different environments?- the application itself or the system that runs an app.
- Distributed Tracing - Distributed tracing is a pattern applied to track requests as they traverse the distributed components of an application. Typically used to pinpoint failures, distributed tracing can also be used to track performance and gather statistics to optimize your application over time.
- Dynamic Exploration Testing - The main aim of the Dynamic Exploration tests is to ensure that software works properly during and after the installation of the software ensuring a stable application without any major flaws.
- Real-Time Monitoring - Testing and monitoring in production is a great way to?learn how your system is really performing?with real users, real requests, and real data. Gathering information about production systems is nothing new, but as more teams adopt practices like continuous delivery,?the information we collect can be expanded?to provide a more complete view of the application.
- Chaos Testing - At a high level, chaotic testing is simply?creating the capability to continuously, but randomly, cause failures in your production system. This practice is meant to test the resiliency of the systems and the environment,
NON FUNCTIONAL TESTS
- Security Tests - It is a type of non-functional testing. Security testing is basically a type of software testing that's done to?check whether the application?or the product is secured or not. It checks to see if the application is vulnerable to attacks if anyone hacks the system or login into the application without any authorization.
- Scalability Tests - Scalability Testing is a type of non-functional testing in which the performance of a software application, system, network, or?process is tested?in terms of its capability to scale up or scale down the number of users request load or other such performance attributes.
- Maintainability Tests - Maintainability is?the ability of the application to go through changes with a fair degree of effortlessness. This attribute is the flexibility with which the application can be modified, for fixing issues, or to add new functionality with a degree of ease.
- Interoperability Tests - Interoperability testing is a form of non-functional testing?to achieve and maintain interoperability traits in the system. Further, interoperability testing is used to verify and validate and data loss, incorrect and unreliable operations, and unreliable performance between the two systems.
- Flexibility Tests - Flexibility is?the ease with which the software can be modified to adapt to different environments, configurations, or user expectations. Flexibility requirements address the user concerns for how easy it is to modify the system to work in different environments.
- Performance Tests - Performance testing checks how well software components work. These tests find issues in software design and architecture performance.
- Usability Tests - It?verifies if the behavior of the system is as per the requirement or not. It covers all the aspects which are not covered in functional testing.
- Suitability Tests - This characteristic represents?the degree to which a product or system provides functions that meet stated and implied needs when used under specified conditions.
- Resiliency Tests - Resilience testing is one part of non-functional software testing that also includes?compliance, endurance, load, and recovery testing. ... Since failures can never be avoided, resilience testing ensures that software can continue performing core functions and avoid data loss even when under stress
- Recoverability Tests - The ability to repair or replace system components predictably, with minimum work effort, and with no loss or disruption of business functionality.
Different teams have their own test environments such as
Performance Testing Environment - This environment allows developers to measure how fast an application responds to an interaction. Various aspects of an application, such as page load speeds, input processing, stability, reliability, and so on, are tested in this environment.?
System Integration Testing (SIT) - The main purpose of system integration testing is to check if all modules, such as code modules, individual applications, and client and server applications, can communicate with each other as per their dependencies. It also ensures shared databases work as expected.?
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) - Acceptance of user acceptance testing is conducted to check if the application meets the business requirements of the end-users. This is the final stage of testing. If the features and functionalities of the application satisfy the end-user, the application is moved to the production environment.?
Quality Assurance (QA) - Quality assurance testing ensures that the application developed is of the highest quality possible for end-users/clients. In this environment, computer programmers test the new software against the previous version to verify that the new product meets the specified parameters.?
Security Testing - This helps developers check the security aspects of the software. These types of tests are performed by specialized testers to examine how secure the software/application is from malicious programs, viruses, threat actors, etc. Testers also validate the authorization and authentication features of the program in this environment.?
Chaos Testing - This test environment analyzes the resiliency of an application by proactively identifying potential areas that could result in application failure or negatively impact end-users. This allows developers and IT teams to see how the application will perform under pressure or stress conditions. This helps prevent unplanned?downtime?and enhances the user experience.?
Alpha Testing - In this environment, end-to-end testing is performed on an application after all modules have been integrated successfully. The goal of an Alpha test is to ensure the application performs according to the client’s expectations.?
Beta Testing - In a Beta testing environment, the application is released to limited users. Real-world users put the application under stress to ensure the product works as intended and satisfies end-user requirements. This is the last testing environment before the final application is released for commercial use. A staging environment with open access is necessary here.
Different types of testing environments, testing techniques, and procedures are used in big distributed, enterprise-level softwares. Testing is a huge ocean of knowledge due to so many techniques, types, processes involved and more than 600 different tools & technologies are used across a wide spectrum of software ecosystems.
