Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
because it determines things like criticality, minute functionality, accepted
level of software application failure, and so on. An application that is meant
to be used by people for getting online information through a portal will be
very different from a software application that is being used for taking care of
accounting functions for any company. Similarly software to be used for any
country's defense department program should be very secure, and the threat
of its being used by an unauthorized person should be completely taken care
of. So the cases mentioned above require that the software be tested thor-
oughly for performance, transaction integrity, and security respectively.
User acceptance testing
◾
—This is one of the most common kinds of testing,
and almost all software projects have user acceptance testing (UAT). UAT
provides a report that helps in determining if the software is satisfactory to an
end user or customer. UAT is done based on the user requirements that were
documented and based on which the software was developed.
Comparison testing
◾
—Comparing software weaknesses and strengths to
competing products. This is essentially used for marketing purposes to high-
light the strengths of one's own software application compared to that of
competitors. Some third-party software evaluation and software selection
service providers also use comparison testing to provide unbiased reports
about competing software products.
Alpha testing
◾
—Testing of an application when development is nearing com-
pletion; minor design changes may still be made as a result of such testing.
Typically alpha testing is done by end users or others, not by programmers or
testers. After alpha testing the software, the defects found in alpha testing can
be fixed and the application can be released for beta testing.
Beta testing
◾
—Testing when development and testing by an internal team are
completed and final l defects and problems need to be found before final l release.
Typically beta testing is done by end users or others and not by programmers
or testers. Beta testing is important because the defects reported by beta testers
can still be fixed before the application is released to final end customers.
Mutation testing
◾
—A method for determining if a set of test data or test
cases is useful, by deliberately introducing various code changes (defects)
and retesting with the original test data/cases to determine if the defects are
detected. Proper implementation requires large computational resources.
Mutation testing is also used in conjunction with test coverage analysis by
introducing defects at different parts of the application to know whether that
part of the application has to be tested.
Agile testing
◾
—Agile testing is done in conjunction with projects on which
agile or extreme programming methodologies are used. They involve similar
approaches to those followed in agile or extreme programming methodologies.
Back-to-back testing
◾
—A kind of functional testing where two or more sim-
ilar components of the application under test are given the same input and
results are compared.
