Know the Essentials of Software Testing

Rohit Bhandari - Apr 14 '23 - - Dev Community

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With the advancement of technology, millions of software applications are being developed every year. Rigorous testing is one of the essential facets in order to deliver the desired and required software application. For instance, Oracle Applications require rigorous testing. And, automated Oracle testing ensures adequate coverage and business continuity.

What Is Software Testing?

It is the process of recognizing software’s accuracy by reviewing the attributes, such as usability, reliability, portability, scalability, and re-usability. In the software testing process, software bugs and errors are found by evaluating the execution of software components.

Attributes of Software

Software refers to programs that provide the environment to do a particular task. The main objective of software testing is to examine the attributes of the software, and attributes determine the functionality and performance of the software. Some important attributes of software are as follows:

Reliability

One of the software attributes determines whether the performance is taking place as intended according to the conditions. There could be factors, such as errors and bugs, imperfectly designed data structures and algorithms, incompatibility with hardware and other software, and poor error handling and recovery. To ensure the reliability of software, the techniques such as fault tolerance, formal verification, testing, and validation can be used.

Usability

This attribute determines whether the software can be used with facility or ease. The required functions of usability are operability, understandability, and learnability. For instance, usability is one of the main challenges in Oracle cloud applications, but by automated Oracle testing, it can be achieved.

Maintainability

This attribute determines how much ease the modifications can be made in the software so that its performance and functionality can be improved. Stability, changeability, and testability are required functions of maintainability.

Portability

A set of attributes concerned with software’s ability to be relocated from one environment to the other. Adaptability, installability, and replaceability are the required functions of portability.

Types of Software Testing

There are various types of software testing that are done to test the software. Now, let’s understand the types of software testing one by one.

Manual Testing

In manual testing, as per the needs of the customer, the functionality of an application is checked without the use of automation tools. There is no requirement for any specific knowledge of any testing tool, and instead, a proper comprehension of the product can help easily prepare the test document.

Furthermore, manual testing is of three types:-

White Box Testing

The manual testing technique examines the internal structure, design, code structure, data structure, and functionality of the software. It is also known as clear box testing, glass box testing, or structural testing.

Black Box Testing

It is manual testing in which software functionality is unknown, meaning testing is done without the knowledge of the internal functionality of the product. It is considered efficient for executing the test in a substantial system. Syntax-driven testing and equivalence partitioning are the ways to do black-box testing.

Automation Testing

“Automation testing refers to the automatic testing of the software in which the developer or tester writes the test script once with the help of testing tools and framework and runs it on the software. The test script automatically tests the software without human intervention and shows the result (either error, bugs are present, or software is free from them).”

Initially, manual efforts are required to create scripts, and after that, the testing process is done automatically to compare the real results with the intended results.

The automation testing process is time-saving and cost-efficient. There are many advantages of automation testing: consistency, early bug detection, fewer human resources, and usability.

Furthermore, automation testing is of many types, which are as follows

  • Unit testing

  • Integration testing

  • Functional testing

  • Regression testing

  • Keyword testing

  • Data-driven testing

Role of a Software Tester

  • Made documentation of the software testing process

  • Collaborate with team members, developers, etc., and also conduct meetings to review the software testing process

  • Validate the software

  • To better understand the requirements of the project, interact with the clients

Wrapping Up!

With the evolution of new-age technologies, billions of applications are to be built. Still, the primary purpose of any software application is to deliver the result according to customer needs. Software testing is essential in order to verify and validate the required functionality of the software product.

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