Smoke and Sanity testing are the most misunderstood topics in Software Testing. There is enormous amount of literature on the subject, but most of them are confusing. The following article makes an attempt to address the confusion.

what is a Software Build?

• As its name implies, exploratory testing is about exploring, finding out about the software, what it does, what it doesn’t do, what works and what doesn’t work. The tester is constantly making decisions about what to test next and where to spend the (limited) time. This is an approach that is most useful when there are no or poor specifications and when time is severely limited.
• Exploratory testing is a hands-on approach in which testers are involved in minimum planning and maximum test execution.

Ad hoc Testing, also known as Random Testing or Monkey Testing, is a method of software testingwithout any planning and documentation. The tests are conducted informally and randomly without any formal expected results.

What is User Acceptance Testing?

Gray Box Testing is a software testing method which is a combination of Black Box Testing method andWhite Box Testing method. In Black Box Testing, the internal structure of the item being tested is unknown to the tester and in White Box Testing the internal structure in known. In Gray Box Testing, the internal structure is partially known. This involves having access to internal data structures and algorithms for purposes of designing the test cases, but testing at the user, or black-box level.

• It is a type of non-functional testing.
• Compatibility testing is a type of software testing used to ensure compatibility of the system/application/website built with various other objects such as other web browsers, hardware platforms, users (in case if it’s very specific type of requirement, such as a user who speaks and can read only a particular language), operating systems etc. This type of testing helps find out how well a system performs in a particular environment that includes hardware, network, operating system and other software etc.
• It is basically the testing of the application or the product built with the computing environment.
• It tests whether the application or the software product built is compatible with the hardware, operating system, database or other system software or not.

• It is a type of non-functional testing.
• Recovery testing is done in order to check how fast and better the application can recover after it has gone through any type of crash or hardware failure etc.

• 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 hack the system or login to the application without any authorization.
• It is a process to determine that an information system protects data and maintains functionality as intended.

• It is  a type of non-functional testing.
• Performance testing is testing that is performed, to determine how fast some aspect of a system performs under a particular workload.
• It can serve different purposes like it can demonstrate that the system meets performance criteria.
• It can compare two systems to find which performs better. Or it can measure what part of the system or workload causes the system to perform badly.

Why do we test a database?

• To check whether the fields in the UI/Front end forms and mapped consistently with the corresponding DB table (and also the fields within).  Typically this mapping information is defined in the requirements documents.
• Whenever a certain action is performed in the front end of an application, a corresponding CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update and delete) action gets invoked at the back end. A tester will have to check if the right action is invoked and the invoked action in itself is successful or not.

• The main objective of the Error handling testing techniques is to ensure that the applications are capable to handling incorrect Transactions.
• The application is smart enough to identify the incorrect transactions and approximate decision need to take and intimate the end user.

Boundary value analysis and Equivalence Class Partitioning both are test case design techniques in black box testing. In this article we are covering “What is Boundary value analysis and equivalence partitioning & its simple examples”.

What is Equivalence Class Partitioning?

Functionality testing is performed to verify that a software application performs and functions correctly according to design specifications. During functionality testing we check the core application functions, text input, menu functions and installation and setup on localized machines, etc.

• Installation and setup on localized machines running localized operating systems and local code pages.

Black Box Testing, also known as Behavioral Testing, is a software testing method in which the internal structure/ design/ implementation of the item being tested is not known to the tester. These tests can be functional or non-functional, though usually functional.

Testing levels are basically to identify missing areas and prevent overlap and repetition between the development life cycle phases. In software development life cycle models there are defined phases like requirement gathering and analysis, design, coding or implementation, testing and deployment.  Each phase goes through the testing. Hence there are various levels of testing. The various levels of testing are:

1. Unit testing: It is basically done by the developers to make sure that their code is working fine and meet the user specifications. They test their piece of code which they have written like classes, functions, interfaces and procedures.

The main review types that come under the static testing are mentioned below:

• It is not a formal process
• It is led by the authors
• Author guide the participants through the document according to his or her thought process to achieve a common understanding and to gather feedback.
• Useful for the people if they are not from the software discipline, who are not used to or cannot easily understand software development process.
• Is especially useful for higher level documents like requirement specification, etc.

Static Testing 

• Static testing is the testing of the software work products manually, or with a set of tools, but they are not executed.
• It starts early in the Life cycle and so it is done during the verification process.
• It does not need computer as the testing of program is done without executing the program. For example:  reviewing, walk through, inspection, etc.
• Most static testing techniques can be used to ‘test’ any form of document including source code, design documents and models, functional specifications and requirement specifications.

• It makes sure that the product is designed to deliver all functionality to the customer.
• Verification is done at the starting of the development process. It includes reviews and meetings, walkthroughs, inspection, etc. to evaluate documents, plans, code, requirements and specifications.
• Suppose you are building a table. Here the verification is about checking all the parts of the table, whether all the four legs are of correct size or not. If one leg of table is not of the right size it will imbalance the end product.Similar behavior is also noticed in case of the software product or application. If any feature of software product or application is not up to the mark or if any defect is found then it will result into the failure of the end product. Hence, verification is very important. It takes place at the starting of the development process.

What is Quality?

What is Quality Assurance?