Types of Software Testing — The Complete Guide
There are many ways of software testing to ensure it’s top-notch and user-friendly. Knowing the types of testing is key to ensuring the software works as expected and is easy to use — from all angles.
Cem Kaner, a renowned software tester and author, has described software testing as “the process of evaluating a product by learning about it through exploration and experimentation.” Let us dig in deep about Types of Software Testing in this blog!
Accessibility Testing
It’s important because it ensures everyone can use a product or service, even with a disability or impairment. We test for stuff like physical, cognitive, and technical accessibility. For instance, we might test a website to ensure it works with screen readers. People with visual impairments use screen readers to navigate the web, so everything on the website must be read out loud properly.
Some cool tools can help with accessibility testing, like NVDA, VoiceOver, aXe, WAVE, and Tenon. They can make it much easier to check if a product or service is accessible to everyone.
Acceptance testing
This testing is like giving a final check to see if a system is all set and meets the user’s needs. The customer or user does this to make sure the product is all set to go. Think of it like checking a website’s links, ensuring the page looks right, and the payment system is safe and sound.
Black Box Testing
So, black box testing is like testing a car without looking under the hood. It’s a software testing technique that checks if an application works properly without digging into the code. The focus is testing the inputs and outputs to ensure everything functions correctly. For example, when testing the login function of a website, you’d enter both valid and invalid login information and check if the system responds correctly.
There are some cool tools to make black box test automation easier, like Testsigma, Ranorex, and Selenium.
End-to-End Testing
End-to-End testing is like ensuring everything in a system runs smoothly, from the top to the bottom. Let’s say you want to log in to a website — you’d check everything from the login page to what happens after you hit the sign-in button. This means ensuring you’ve typed in the correct username and password and that the website handles them correctly. You’ll also want to double-check the messages on the website to ensure they’re accurate, whether you’re logging in successfully or not.
Some cool tools can save you time and effort if you want to automate end-to-end testing. Examples of these tools are Testsigma, Selenium, and SoapUI.
Functional Testing
Functional testing is basically like checking if the software is doing what it’s supposed to do. It’s like ensuring everything is working as it should, you know?
For example, a simple, functional test would be to check if the login feature works. You have to try logging in with the correct information, see if you get in, and confirm the system gives an error message for the wrong information.
If you’re looking for tools to help you with automating your functional testing, there are Testsigma, Selenium, and Ranorex.
Interactive Testing
I should say this is a cool software testing method where you get to interact directly with the software. You (the tester) give the software instructions and see how it responds. It’s perfect for finding issues with the user interface, user-friendliness, and overall user experience.
For example, let’s say you’re testing a website with a search box and button. You could type in a search and see if the website gives you the right results if the search box and button are easy to use, and if any things need to be corrected. Interactive testing can also uncover unexpected behaviors or results not documented in the requirements.
Integration Testing
Next comes Integration testing. This software testing type verifies the working of a system when its different components are integrated.
An example of an integration test would be testing a shopping cart system. This would involve testing the integration between the components, such as the shopping cart, payment gateway, and shipping system, to ensure they all work together as expected.
Some tools that help automate integration testing are Testsigma, Selenium, and SoapUI.
Load Testing
So, load testing is testing how well a system can handle a lot of traffic. Like, say, you want to know if a website can handle a hundred people using it simultaneously. That’s where load testing comes in — it’ll check if the website can handle the load without crashing or slowing down.
And hey, some pretty cool tools out there can help you with load testing. You’ve got LoadRunner, JMeter, and NeoLoad, to name a few. These tools can make load testing a lot easier and more automated.
Non-Functional Testing
Non-functional testing is a type of testing that checks the non-functional aspects of a system. This means it helps ensure the system is scalable, reliable, and available, among other non-functional requirements.
For example, we can simulate multiple users accessing the system at the same time and see how the application handles it. This helps us measure things like response time and resource usage.
Some tools that help automate non-functional testing are LoadRunner, JMeter, and NeoLoad.
Performance Testing
Performance testing is like giving a system a workout and seeing how well it does. You put it through different situations to see how it handles them.
For example, you might check how fast a webpage loads. So by requesting it and timing how long it takes for the server to respond. If it’s taking too long, there could be an issue with the server or the app.
Here are some cool tools for you. JMeter, LoadRunner, and NeoLoad can make performance testing easier and more efficient.
Regression Testing
Regression testing means you’re double-checking everything to ensure nothing broke after you made changes to the software. You want to be sure that the stuff that worked before is still working fine now that you’ve made some updates.
For example, let’s say you made an app where folks can input their usernames. It’s smart to run a regression test to ensure it’s still working after you’ve fixed any issues or added new features.
And guess what? Some pretty sweet tools are out there to help you automate regression testing, like Testsigma, Selenium, and Ranorex.
Sanity Testing
Sanity testing is just a way to double-check that the system is working as it should be. You do this by testing its main features right after being built. Easy peasy!
A common example of sanity testing is checking whether an application is launching successfully. If the application is not launching, then there is no point in proceeding with the testing. Similarly, if the login functionality of the application is not working, then executing further tests is pointless. Sanity testing helps to identify such critical issues at an early stage, thereby saving time, effort, and resources.
If you’re looking for automation tools, you might want to check out Testsigma, Selenium, and Appium. These are great tools that can make your sanity testing a lot easier!
Security Testing
Security testing is about ensuring your system is safe from tricky hackers. It involves checking for common security problems and fixing them before they can cause any damage.
Suppose you’re running an e-commerce website where customers can purchase products online. You want to ensure that your website is secure and that customers’ personal and financial information is protected. Security testing allows you to identify potential vulnerabilities in your website’s code or server configuration. So, don’t skip out on security testing — protecting your website and your customer’s data is important.
Single User Performance Testing
Alright, when you’re testing a system, you have to make sure it can handle one user first, you know? That’s called Single-User Performance Testing.
Let me give you an example. Say you’re testing a website and want to see how long it takes to load when only one person uses it.
This way, you can find any problems with how the website works — no need to stress about doing all that testing yourself. You can use tools like LoadRunner, JMeter, and NeoLoad to make it easier and automate performance testing.
Smoke Testing
Smoke testing is a type of testing that is used to verify very basic functionalities of a system. This type of testing is usually done to know if the system is ready for detailed testing.
A simple example of Smoke Testing is to turn on a computer and then check to see if the monitor and keyboard are working. Some tools that help automate smoke testing are Testsigma, Selenium, and Appium.
Stress Testing
Stress testing is a type of testing used to evaluate a system’s performance under extreme conditions. It typically involves running the system at high loads for an extended period to determine its breaking point.
A simple example of a stress test would be to see how a web server responds when it receives a high volume of simultaneous requests.Some tools that help automate stress testing are LoadRunner, JMeter, and NeoLoad.
Unit Testing
Unit testing is a type of testing that is used to test individual components of a system. And is usually a type of White Box testing. Example: A unit test for a function that adds two numbers might test that given the input of 2 and 4, the output is 6. Some tools for unit testing are JUnit, NUnit, and xUnit.
White Box Testing
Funnily we can say, “White box testing is like having access to the secret sauce recipe at your favorite restaurant.”
White box testing is a software testing method in which the internal structure and workings of the software are examined to verify that it is functioning as intended. For example, if a function takes in two numbers and is supposed to return the sum of those numbers, a white box test would be to provide the function with two numbers, like 5 and 10, and check that the output is 15.
Some tools used for white box testing are JUnit, NUnit, and xUnit.
Conclusion
There are many ways to test out software and find any problems that could mess with how well it works and how easy it is to use. If we know what testing methods and tools to use, we can ensure our software rocks and does everything users need.
