Software Testing - Part I

Chapter 8 Software testing 2

Topics covered

 Development testing
 Release testing
 User testing

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Program testing

 Testing is intended to show that a program does what it is intended to do and

to discover program defects before it is put into use.
 When you test software, you execute a program using artificial data.
 You check the results of the test run for errors, anomalies or information
about the program’s non-functional attributes.
 Can reveal the presence of errors NOT their
absence.
 Testing is part of a more general verification and validation process, which
also includes static validation techniques.

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Program testing goals

 To demonstrate to the developer and the customer

that the software meets its requirements.
 For custom software, this means that there should be at
least one test for every requirement in the requirements
document. For generic software products, it means that
there should be tests for all of the system features, plus
combinations of these features, that will be incorporated in
the product release.
 To discover situations in which the behavior of the
software is incorrect, undesirable or does not
conform to its specification.
 Defect testing is concerned with rooting out undesirable
system behavior such as system crashes, unwanted
interactions with other systems, incorrect computations and
data corruption. Chapter 8 Software testing 5
Validation and defect testing

 The first goal leads to validation testing

 You expect the system to perform correctly using a given set of test cases that
reflect the system’s expected use.
 The second goal leads to defect testing
 The test cases are designed to expose defects. The test cases in defect testing can
be deliberately obscure and need not reflect how the system is normally used.

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Testing process goals

 Validation testing
 To demonstrate to the developer and the system customer that the software meets
its requirements
 A successful test shows that the system operates as intended.
 Defect testing
 To discover faults or defects in the software where its behaviour is incorrect or not
in conformance with its specification
 A successful test is a test that makes the system perform incorrectly and so
exposes a defect in the system.

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An input-output model of program testing

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Verification vs validation

 Verification:
"Are we building the product right”.
 The software should conform to its specification.
 Validation:
"Are we building the right product”.
 The software should do what the user really requires.

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V & V confidence

 Aim of V & V is to establish confidence that the system is ‘fit for purpose’.
 Depends on system’s purpose, user expectations and marketing environment
 Software purpose
• The level of confidence depends on how critical the software is to an organisation.
 User expectations
• Users may have low expectations of certain kinds of software.
 Marketing environment
• Getting a product to market early may be more important than finding defects in the
program.

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Inspections and testing

 Software inspections Concerned with analysis of

the static system representation to discover problems
(static verification)
 May be supplemented by tool-based document and code
analysis.
 Software testing Concerned with exercising and
observing product behaviour (dynamic verification)
 The system is executed with test data and its operational
behaviour is observed.

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Inspections and testing

Chapter 8 Software testing 12

Software inspections

 These involve people examining the source representation with the aim of
discovering anomalies and defects.
 Inspections do not require execution of a system so may be used before
implementation.
 They may be applied to any representation of the system (requirements,
design,configuration data, test data, etc.).
 They have been shown to be an effective technique for discovering
program errors.

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Advantages of inspections

 During testing, errors can mask (hide) other errors. Because inspection is a
static process, you don’t have to be concerned with interactions between
errors.
 Incomplete versions of a system can be inspected without additional costs. If
a program is incomplete, then you need to develop specialized test
harnesses to test the parts that are available.
 As well as searching for program defects, an inspection can also consider
broader quality attributes of a program, such as compliance with standards,
portability and maintainability.

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Inspections and testing

 Inspections and testing are complementary and not opposing verification

techniques.
 Both should be used during the V & V process.
 Inspections can check conformance with a specification but not conformance
with the customer’s real requirements.
 Inspections cannot check all non-functional characteristics such as
performance, usability, etc.

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A model of the software testing process

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Stages of testing

 Development testing, where the system is tested during development to

discover bugs and defects.
 Release testing, where a separate testing team test a complete version of the
system before it is released to users.
 User testing, where users or potential users of a system test the system in
their own environment.

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Development testing

 Development testing includes all testing activities that are carried out
by the team developing the system.
 Unit testing, where individual program units or object classes are tested. Unit
testing should focus on testing the functionality of objects or methods.
 Component testing, where several individual units are integrated to create
composite components. Component testing should focus on testing component
interfaces.
 System testing, where some or all of the components in a system are integrated
and the system is tested as a whole. System testing should focus on testing
component interactions.

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Unit testing

 Unit testing is the process of testing individual components in isolation.

 It is a defect testing process.
 Units may be:
 Individual functions or methods within an object
 Object classes with several attributes and methods
 Composite components with defined interfaces used to access their functionality.

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Object class testing

 Complete test coverage of a class involves

 Testing all operations associated with an object
 Setting and interrogating all object attributes
 Exercising the object in all possible states.
 Inheritance makes it more difficult to design object class tests as the
information to be tested is not localised.

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Automated testing

 Whenever possible, unit testing should be automated so that tests are run
and checked without manual intervention.
 In automated unit testing, you make use of a test automation framework
(such as JUnit) to write and run your program tests.
 Unit testing frameworks provide generic test classes that you extend to
create specific test cases. They can then run all of the tests that you have
implemented and report, often through some GUI, on the success of
otherwise of the tests.

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Unit test effectiveness

 The test cases should show that, when used as expected, the component
that you are testing does what it is supposed to do.
 If there are defects in the component, these should be revealed by test
cases.
 This leads to 2 types of unit test case:
 The first of these should reflect normal operation of a program and should show that the
component works as expected.
 The other kind of test case should be based on testing experience of where common
problems arise. It should use abnormal inputs to check that these are properly processed
and do not crash the component.

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Testing strategies

 Partition testing, where you identify groups of inputs that have common
characteristics and should be processed in the same way.
 You should choose tests from each of these groups.
 Guideline-based testing, where you use testing guidelines to choose test
cases.
 These guidelines reflect previous experience of the kinds of errors that programmers
often make when developing components.

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Partition testing

 Input data and output results often fall into different classes where all
members of a class are related.
 Each of these classes is an equivalence partition or domain where the
program behaves in an equivalent way for each class member.
 Test cases should be chosen from each partition.

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Equivalence partitioning

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General testing guidelines

 Choose inputs that force the system to generate all error messages
 Repeat the same input or series of inputs numerous times
 Force invalid outputs to be generated
 Force computation results to be too large or too small.

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Testing guidelines (sequences)

 Test software with sequences which have only a single value.

 Use sequences of different sizes in different tests.
 Derive tests so that the first, middle and last elements of the sequence are
accessed.
 Test with sequences of zero length.

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Component testing

 Software components are often composite components that are made up of

several interacting objects.
 You access the functionality of these objects through the defined component
interface.
 Testing composite components should therefore focus on showing that the
component interface behaves according to its specification.
 You can assume that unit tests on the individual objects within the component have been
completed.

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Interface testing

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Interface testing

 Objectives are to detect faults due to interface errors or invalid assumptions

about interfaces.
 Interface types
 Parameter interfaces Data passed from one method or procedure to another.
 Shared memory interfaces Block of memory is shared between procedures or functions.
 Procedural interfaces Sub-system encapsulates a set of procedures to be called by other
sub-systems.

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Interface errors

 Interface misuse
 A calling component calls another component and makes an error in its use of its
interface e.g. parameters in the wrong order.
 Interface misunderstanding
 A calling component embeds assumptions about the behaviour of the called component
which are incorrect.
 Timing errors
 The called and the calling component operate at different speeds and out-of-date
information is accessed.

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Interface testing guidelines

 Design tests so that parameters to a called procedure are at the

extreme ends of their ranges.
 Always test pointer parameters with null pointers.
 Design tests which cause the component to fail.
 Use stress testing in message passing systems.
 In shared memory systems, vary the order in which components are
activated.

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System testing

 System testing during development involves integrating components to

create a version of the system and then testing the integrated system.
 The focus in system testing is testing the interactions between components.
 System testing checks that components are compatible, interact correctly
and transfer the right data at the right time across their interfaces.
 System testing tests the emergent behaviour of a system.

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System and component testing

 During system testing, reusable components that have been separately

developed and off-the-shelf systems may be integrated with newly
developed components. The complete system is then tested.
 Components developed by different team members or sub-teams may
be integrated at this stage. System testing is a collective rather than an
individual process.
 In some companies, system testing may involve a separate testing team with no
involvement from designers and programmers.

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Use-case testing

 The use-cases developed to identify system interactions can be used

as a basis for system testing.
 Each use case usually involves several system components so testing
the use case forces these interactions to occur.
 The sequence diagrams associated with the use case documents the
components and interactions that are being tested.

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Testing policies

 Exhaustive system testing is impossible so testing policies which

define the required system test coverage may be developed.
 Examples of testing policies:
 All system functions that are accessed through menus should be tested.
 Combinations of functions (e.g. text formatting) that are accessed through the
same menu must be tested.
 Where user input is provided, all functions must be tested with both correct and
incorrect input.

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Regression testing

 Regression testing is testing the system to check that changes have not
‘broken’ previously working code.
 In a manual testing process, regression testing is expensive but, with
automated testing, it is simple and straightforward. All tests are rerun
every time a change is made to the program.
 Tests must run ‘successfully’ before the change is committed.

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