Web Software Testing: Ensuring Web Software Functionality
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.
Even though the testing of web software is vital, there is at all times rush in building and testing those application due to time constraints. There are different methods that the test engineers use to test this software. They are code testing, load testing, compatibility testing, functional testing and regression testing.
The standard pattern for the release of web software consists of two main stages, alpha and beta testing. The first stage or alpha testing takes place at the developers’ site where either potential users/customers or a purposely created independent test team will interact with a simulated or actual operational version of the software being tested. Because during alpha testing the software is actually still being developed only small modules of the software are tested during this stage. When of-the-self software is employed, alpha testing is often used as an internal acceptance test. After being alpha tested software will only be released when all the main functional sections have been both coded and tested.
After the alpha testing has been finished the web software is ready to be beta tested. Beta testing is done by a limited amount of users that can use the software before its official release takes place. The alpha/beta testing method is not the standard procedure when testing web site design. This is because HTML coding makes it very easy to design independent web pages that can afterwards being easily integrated so the design team can code and test each page independently.
Code testing refers to the process where the testing or development engineer verifies the code and make sure that there are no software bugs. Because the time involved in web development is small it is important that the software is free of bugs. A popular method used by experienced programmers for bug free coding is the paired-programming.
Paired programming is a software development method in which two programmers work together at one keyboard. The driver types in the code while the observer or navigator reviews each line. This strategy is appealing because fewer bugs are produced. According to The Economist, “Laurie Williams of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City has shown that paired programmers are only 15% slower than two independent individual programmers, but produce 15% fewer bugs.”
The fact that the software is tested many times during the development process should provide bug free software by the end of it. Load testing is used to check if a web-site/application will fail or loss performance under the added pressure of heavy loads or inputs from multiple users log-in, mail servers, etc. Load testing will provide information regarding the amount of users that could connect simultaneously to a site, the number of transactions that the system can cope at the same time and its responsiveness under different circumstances or amount of traffic.
Compatibility testing evaluates the application’s compatibility with the computing environment like the operating system, database, browser compatibility, backwards compatibility, computing capacity of the hardware platform and compatibility of the peripherals.
Functional testing confirms its specifications and accurately performs all of the required tasks. This involves doing a series of tests that perform a feature by feature validation of behavior, utilizing a wide range of normal and erroneous input data. Regression testing is performed to ensure that enhancements, defect repairs or other changes to the software have not disrupted 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.
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