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A test script in software testing is a set of instructions that will be performed on the system under test to test that the system functions as expected.
There are various means for executing test scripts. These last two types are also done in manual testing.
Automated testing may be executed continuously without the need for human intervention, they are easily repeatable, and often faster. Automated tests are useful in situations where the test is to be executed several times, for example as part of regression testing. Automated tests can be disadvantageous when poorly written, leading to incorrect testing or broken tests being carried out. [5]
Automated tests can, like any piece of software, be poorly written or simply break during playback. [6] They also can only examine what they have been programmed to examine. Since most systems are designed with human interaction in mind, it is good practice that a human tests the system at some point. A trained manual tester can notice that the system under test is misbehaving without being prompted or directed; automated tests can only examine what they have been programmed to examine. When used in regression testing, manual testers can find new bugs while ensuring that old bugs do not reappear while an automated test can only ensure the latter. Mixed testing, with automated and manual testing, is often used; automating what needs to be tested often and can be easily checked by a machine, and using manual testing to do test design and exploratory testing.
One should consider the return on investment for automating any given test script, i.e. does the cost to build and maintain that script cost less than it would take to simply execute it manually. Where cost can be measured in terms of time and/or money but also the opportunity cost of not freeing up people to do other work.[ citation needed ]
In engineering and its various subdisciplines, acceptance testing is a test conducted to determine if the requirements of a specification or contract are met. It may involve chemical tests, physical tests, or performance tests.
Software testing is the act of examining the artifacts and the behavior of the software under test by verification and validation. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks of software implementation. Test techniques include, but are not limited to:
Regression testing is re-running functional and non-functional tests to ensure that previously developed and tested software still performs as expected after a change. If not, that would be called a regression.
In computer programming, unit testing is a software testing method by which individual units of source code—sets of one or more computer program modules together with associated control data, usage procedures, and operating procedures—are tested to determine whether they are fit for use. It is a standard step in development and implementation approaches such as Agile.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to software engineering:
White-box testing is a method of software testing that tests internal structures or workings of an application, as opposed to its functionality. In white-box testing, an internal perspective of the system is used to design test cases. The tester chooses inputs to exercise paths through the code and determine the expected outputs. This is analogous to testing nodes in a circuit, e.g. in-circuit testing (ICT). White-box testing can be applied at the unit, integration and system levels of the software testing process. Although traditional testers tended to think of white-box testing as being done at the unit level, it is used for integration and system testing more frequently today. It can test paths within a unit, paths between units during integration, and between subsystems during a system–level test. Though this method of test design can uncover many errors or problems, it has the potential to miss unimplemented parts of the specification or missing requirements. Where white-box testing is design-driven, that is, driven exclusively by agreed specifications of how each component of software is required to behave, white-box test techniques can accomplish assessment for unimplemented or missing requirements.
In software testing, test automation is the use of software separate from the software being tested to control the execution of tests and the comparison of actual outcomes with predicted outcomes. Test automation can automate some repetitive but necessary tasks in a formalized testing process already in place, or perform additional testing that would be difficult to do manually. Test automation is critical for continuous delivery and continuous testing.
In the context of software engineering, software quality refers to two related but distinct notions:
In software engineering, a test case is a specification of the inputs, execution conditions, testing procedure, and expected results that define a single test to be executed to achieve a particular software testing objective, such as to exercise a particular program path or to verify compliance with a specific requirement. Test cases underlie testing that is methodical rather than haphazard. A battery of test cases can be built to produce the desired coverage of the software being tested. Formally defined test cases allow the same tests to be run repeatedly against successive versions of the software, allowing for effective and consistent regression testing.
In software engineering, continuous integration (CI) is the practice of merging all developers' working copies to a shared mainline several times a day. Nowadays it is typically implemented in such a way that it triggers an automated build with testing. Grady Booch first proposed the term CI in his 1991 method, although he did not advocate integrating several times a day. Extreme programming (XP) adopted the concept of CI and did advocate integrating more than once per day – perhaps as many as tens of times per day.
Dynamic testing is a term used in software engineering to describe the testing of the dynamic behavior of code.
In software development, functional testing is a quality assurance (QA) process and a type of black-box testing that bases its test cases on the specifications of the software component under test. Functions are tested by feeding them input and examining the output, and internal program structure is rarely considered. Functional software testing is conducted to evaluate the compliance of a system or component with specified functional requirements. Functional testing usually describes what the system does.
In software engineering, graphical user interface testing is the process of testing a product's graphical user interface (GUI) to ensure it meets its specifications. This is normally done through the use of a variety of test cases.
Manual testing is the process of manually testing software for defects. It requires a tester to play the role of an end user where by they use most of the application's features to ensure correct behaviour. To guarantee completeness of testing, the tester often follows a written test plan that leads them through a set of important test cases.
Data-driven testing (DDT), also known as table-driven testing or parameterized testing, is a software testing methodology that is used in the testing of computer software to describe testing done using a table of conditions directly as test inputs and verifiable outputs as well as the process where test environment settings and control are not hard-coded. In the simplest form the tester supplies the inputs from a row in the table and expects the outputs which occur in the same row. The table typically contains values which correspond to boundary or partition input spaces. In the control methodology, test configuration is "read" from a database.
In computer programming and software development, debugging is the process of finding and resolving bugs within computer programs, software, or systems.
Parasoft C/C++test is an integrated set of tools for testing C and C++ source code that software developers use to analyze, test, find defects, and measure the quality and security of their applications. It supports software development practices that are part of development testing, including static code analysis, dynamic code analysis, unit test case generation and execution, code coverage analysis, regression testing, runtime error detection, requirements traceability, and code review. It's a commercial tool that supports operation on Linux, Windows, and Solaris platforms as well as support for on-target embedded testing and cross compilers.
ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119Software and systems engineering -- Software testing is a series of five international standards for software testing. First developed in 2007 and released in 2013, the standard "defines vocabulary, processes, documentation, techniques, and a process assessment model for testing that can be used within any software development lifecycle."
This article discusses a set of tactics useful in software testing. It is intended as a comprehensive list of tactical approaches to Software Quality Assurance (more widely colloquially known as Quality Assurance and general application of the test method.
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