Topic 6: Software Testing

Instructor: Dr. Bii

 Topic 6
6.0 Software Testing
6.1 Validation & Verification (V & V)
6.2 Software Testing
6.3 Stages of Testing
6.4 Types of Testing & Processes
6.5 Review Questions.

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 Introduction

 If requirements analysis, modeling, and

design are done with disciplined
attention, good quality software results.
 But any human activity, however carefully
performed, will involve mistakes/errors.
 The system must therefore be verified
and validated.
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 … Introduction

 Testing of software has 2 goals:

– To demonstrate to the developer and
the customer that the software meets
its requirements.
– To discover situations in which the
behaviour of the software is incorrect,
undesirable or does not conform to its
specification.
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 Validation & Verification
 During development, the software must be
checked to ensure that it meets its
requirements/specifications and delivers
the functionality expected by the customer.
 The checking and analysis processes
meant to achieve these are called
VERIFICATION and VALIDATION (V&V).
 V&V includes requirements reviews, design
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reviews, code inspections, and testing.
 Verification & Validation
 Sommerville:
– Verification: “Are we building the
product right?”
i.e. software should conform to its
specification
– Validation: “Are we building the right
product?”
i.e. software should do what the user really
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 …V&V
 Inspections and reviews analyze and
check the system requirements, design
models, the program source code, and
even proposed system tests.

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 …V&V
 Software inspections analyse the static system
representations to discover problems (static
verification)
– May be supplemented by tool-based document and
code analysis.
 These involve people examining the source
representation with the aim of discovering
anomalies and defects.
 Inspections do not require execution of a
8 system so may be used before implementation.
 Software Testing

 Testing is part of a broader process of

software verification and validation (V &
V).
 Testing is the process of deliberately
trying to cause failures in a system in
order to detect any defects that might be
present.
“Testing can only show the presence of errors, not
9 their absence”
 … V & V – Software testing
 Software testing is 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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 Software Testing Stages

 Sommerville (p.231) notes that software

goes through 3 stages of testing:
– Development testing - testing during
development to discover bugs and defects.
– Release testing - testing a complete version
of the system before it is released to users.
– User testing - users or potential users of a
system test the system in their own
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environment.
 (a) Development Testing
 This includes all testing activities carried
out by the team developing the system.
 It involves 3 stages too:
– Unit testing - individual program units or object
classes are tested.
– Component testing - several individual units are
integrated to create composite components & tested.
– System testing - some or all of the components in a
system are integrated and the system is tested as a
12 whole.
 … (i) Unit Testing

 Unit testing is the process of testing

individual components in isolation.
 It is a defect testing process - meant to
discover faults or defects in the software.
 A successful unit test is a test that
makes the unit perform incorrectly and
so exposes a defect in the unit.
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 … unit testing

 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
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functionality.
 … (ii) Component Testing

 Components are often composite

components that are made up of several
interacting objects.
 Testing these components should focus
on showing that the component interface
behaves according to its specification.

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 … component testing

 Focus on interfaces between modules (A,

B, C).

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 … (iii) 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.

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 … System Testing

 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 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.
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 … System 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.

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 (b) Release Testing

 Release testing is the process of testing

a particular release of a system that is
intended for use outside of the
development team.
 The primary goal of the release testing
process is to convince the supplier of the
system that it is good enough for use.

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 … Release Testing

 It has to show that the system delivers its

specified functionality, performance and
dependability, and that it does not fail
during normal use.
 It is usually a black-box testing process
where tests are only derived from the
system specification.

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 … Release Testing

 Release testing is a form of system

testing, done by a team that has not
been involved in the system
development.
 The objective of this form of system
testing is to check that the system meets
its requirements and is good enough for
external use (validation testing).
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 … Release Testing

 Involves:
– Requirements-based testing which involves
examining each requirement and developing a test
or tests for it.
– Performance testing in which emergent properties of
a system are tested i.e. overloading the systems to
gauge its performance and failure behaviour (stress
testing).

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 (c) User Testing

 Also called customer testing.

 It is a testing process in which users or
customers provide input and advice on
system testing.
 User testing is essential, even when
comprehensive system and release
testing have been carried out – because
user environment may be different.
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 Types of User Testing
 Alpha testing
– Users of the software work with the development
team to test the software at the developer’s site.

 Beta testing
– A release of the software is made available to users
to allow them to experiment and to raise problems
that they discover with the system developers.

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 … types of user testing
 Acceptance testing
– Customers test a system to decide whether or not it
is ready to be accepted from the system developers
and deployed in the customer environment.
Primarily for custom systems.

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 …

 .

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 References
 Pressman – Chap 22, 23 – all must read
this chapter.
 Sommerville – Chap 8

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 Seminar Presentation
Task 17:

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 Seminar Presentation
Task 18:

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