Web Software Testing: Guarantees Safety and Functionality | Software

By JohnHansen
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Software testing is an important stage within the software development cycle (SDCL). There are different testing types and they are useful at different stages of the software development cycle. From the initial development of the application until it reaches the marketing phase different testing types will be used. In addition, all the different versions of the software have to be tested before they are delivered to either the customer or the target market.

There are many different classes of software and software for web applications is one of them. The importance of this type of software has increased rapidly since the arrival of the Internet. Because of the high impact Internet has on our daily lives any web software is carefully tested before launching in order to reduce the associated security risks that originate from the use of the Internet.

The time available to develop and test web software is always limited. While the web software is being designed and developed it is also being tested by the testing's engineers using different types of tests. The different types of tests can be grouped in code testing, load testing, compatibility testing, functional testing and regression testing.

The web software is usually released using a pattern of software release known as alpha/beta testing. This is a simulated or actual operational test conducted by potential users or an independent test team at the developers' site. The software is incomplete at this point and testing is done only for small modules of the software. Alpha testing is frequently employed for off-the-shelf software as a method of internal acceptance testing. Software that has been alpha tested cannot be released until all the major functional parts have been coded and tested.

After the alpha testing is completed the software is permitted to undergo the beta phase of testing. In beta testing the web software I completely built. The software is made available for use to a restricted number of customers intended for software testing previous to the official release. In case of website design it is easy to put together the various pages as the website design uses HTML. So the alpha/beta technique is generally not used for website development. This imply that it is possible to build and test one page at a time and later go to the next one with independent testing for each one.

When software testers or development engineers are code testing they are checking for the presence of software bugs. Web development is a very rapid process so the absence of bugs is required. Paired-programming is one of the favorite methods that highly qualified testers can use to produce bug free coding.

Two coders working at a single workstation it is at the core of paired programming. The developer typing the code is called the driver while the programmer that checks every line of code as it is produced is called the observer or the navigator. Support for this methodology is provided by some research data produced by Laurie Williams at University of Utah in Salt Lake City. According to this research, paired programmers produce code with 15% less bugs while only being 15% slower than individual programmers.

The testing process continues through out the software development cycle so that at the time of final release it is free of bugs. Load testing is done to see at what point the application fails or the performance reduces when under heavy loads such as multiple users on or heavy server traffic. This type of testing will help to arrive at statistics such as how many users the site will sustain at the same time, the quantity of communication it will hold and the reaction time under various circumstances.

The testing done to estimate the compatibility of the application with the different interacting hardware of software is the Compatibility testing. This method tests how good the software is in interactions with operating system, peripherals, database, browser etc. It also tests the computing capacity of the hardware platform and the peripherals.

The testing used to validate the conformance to specifications and requirements is the Functional testing. This testing involves performing a sequence of tests to validate the behavior of the software, feature by feature using a large number of normal and abnormal data. The Regression testing the type of testing done to make sure that improvement, defect corrections or any additional changes to the software has not broken down any existing functionality.

Regression testing is very important whenever there's iterative development of software. In this type of development, the developer adds another module with some functionality to the existing module that's running. One should make sure that adding this module does not ruin the existing functionality. Regression testing is performed for the purpose of discovering regression bugs. The above tests are essential for completing web software testing.

About the Author

Software Testing Basics cover the basic steps in testing software. Our site provides more articles on software testing. For example Black Box Testing tests without knowledge of the code.

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