Testing Complex Applications - Software Testing: Testing Across the Entire Software Development Life Cycle - page 249

14.6 PUTTING TESTING COMPLEX APPLICATIONS
IN PERSPECTIVE

The advent of major commerce on the Internet has brought with it very complex,
business critical software applications. These applications challenge the software
tester to identify as many traditional testing approaches as possible that are still ap-
propriate and effective for e-commerce testing. Where traditional testing approaches
fail, the software tester is challenged to fi nd a minimum number of new, reusable
testing approaches that fi ll the traditional testing approach gap.
Because e-commerce is surely not the last frontier of software development, the
way we extend our traditional testing approaches to e-commerce applications may give
us a clue about the way we can approach the next software development frontiers and re-
sist the temptation to discard all of our traditional testing approaches and experience.

14.7 SUMMARY

This approach is basically “divide and conquer.” Divide the complex application
into manageable application components that can be conquered by familiar testing
techniques.
Where do you start your test planning for a complex application? Start at a fa-
miliar starting point: the testing strategy chessboard. Split the testing strategy into
multiple separate chessboards corresponding to major application components for
more effi cient test planning and execution focus. Finally, account for the connectiv-
ity among the separate chessboards by planning appropriate linkage testing.

KEY TERMS

1-Tier application
2-Tier application
3-Tier application
n-Tier application
Tier 1
Tier 2

Tier 3
Tier 4
Client tier
Server tier
Security tier
Web services tier

Tier-to-tier connectiv-
itty
Test harness
DML
SQL
API