Black-box and White-box Testing

Black box and white box testing are the testing methods for software verification.

In black box testing, the whole system is treated as black box and user/tester does not has any idea about the inside structure of the system. The user simply enters the input and verifies the output. User refers to the requirements and verifies the results. That is why, it is also called Specifications based testing. Other names for black box testing are: Functional testing, closed-box testing, behavioral testing.


In white box testing, the user/tester is aware of internal structure, algorithm and code of the system. The user tests the software according the knowledge of inside structure of the system and verifies the system. Other names for white box testing are: Structural testing, clear-box testing, glass-box testing.

Software Development Life Cycle - SDLC

Software development life cycle (SDLC) is a systemic process referred to develop software. It usually describes the starting, ending and in-between stages for successful development of the software. There are many different SDLC models used for software development. Every model has its own methodology to investigate requirements, when development and testing will start in the whole process. Here are common types of SDLC models:

• Waterfall model
• V - model
• Agile (Iterative model)

Need of Software Testing

Why software testing is necessary? Why it is required in SDLC?

Answer is:

• To verify if developed solution meets the requirements
• To verify the completeness and correctness of the application/system
• To verify the reliability, usability of the application/system
• To find defects as early as possible to avoid higher fixing cost at later stages
• To find maximum number of defects to ensure high quality

What is Software Testing

Software testing is the process to verify if the developed solution/product meets the requirements with desired quality. Software testing is investigation to find unknown defects in the system once developers provide the product. The main intention of performing software testing is find maximum number of defects which in turn will ensure quality of the final product.

Software testing can also be stated as the process of validating and verifying that a software program/application/product:

1. meets the business and technical requirements that guided its design and development;
2. works as expected; and
3. meets defined quality standards

Software testing can be started at any phase of software development life cycle (depending upon the methodology used to develop software). But it is always preferred to start testing activities at early stage to have better defect stage contamination.

Software testing is also termed as the process to verify completeness and correctness of developed solution/system. 

Automation Framework

What do you understand by automation framework?
What are the driving parameters for automation framework?
Platform independence and access



A test automation framework is a set of assumptions, concepts and tools that provide support for automated software testing. The main advantage of such a framework is the low cost for maintenance. If there is change to any test case then only the test case file needs to be updated and the Driver Script and Startup script will remain the same. Ideally, there is no need to update the scripts in case of changes to the application.
Choosing the right framework/scripting technique helps in maintaining lower costs. The costs associated with test scripting are due to development and maintenance efforts. The approach of scripting used during test automation has effect on costs.
Various framework/scripting techniques are generally used:

1. Linear (procedural code, possibly generated by tools like those that use record and playback)
2. Structured (uses control structures - typically ‘if-else’, ‘switch’, ‘for’, ‘while’ conditions/ statements)
3. Data-driven (data is persisted outside of tests in a database, spreadsheet, or other mechanism)
4. Keyword-driven
5. Hybrid (two or more of the patterns above are used)

The Testing framework is responsible for:^[1]

1. defining the format in which to express expectations
2. creating a mechanism to hook into or drive the application under test
3. executing the tests
4. reporting results

Another view Automation Framework is not a tool to perform some specific task, but is an infrastructure that provides a complete solution where different tools work together in an unified manner hence providing a common platform to the automation engineer using them.

Stage Containment

It means that the defect should be detected in the same stage where it is originated. The cost of fixing the defect in the same stage is much cheaper than to fix it in later stages. A bad case (without stage containment) and a good case (with stage containment) is shown in below screenshots:


Without stage containment

With stage containment

V-Model

• VERIFICATION & VALIDATION
• Ensures quality  from beginning of the process to end of the process
• Structured, organized and efficient way of testing
• Keep on enhancing test cases as we move toward development phase
• Ensures complete testing of the initial requirements
• Detect defects in early stages (stage containment) to save cost, effort and and chances of failure of application at later stages

V-Model

Functional vs Non-Functional Testing

What should application do? Verifying the application's specific functionality as per requirements is called functional testing.

Non-functional testing deals with verifying non-functional requirements. like performance, scalability, security etc Non-functional testing mainly deals with quality, performance and usability of the product.

Operational Acceptance Testing (OAT)

Operational acceptance testing (OAT), also called operational readiness testing, is acceptance testing focuses on the operational readiness of the system which is to be deployed to the production environment.

Web services, backup facilities, database connectivity disaster recovery procedures, working with different operating systems, working with different browsers (in case of web based application) etc are various tasks performed in OAT.

Beta Testing

Beta testing is acceptance testing (external) done at client's site (where software has to be deployed). It is done by end users verifying product meets all requirements and operates as expected on client's machine. Beta testing is done before beta testing. It is similar to the beta version of any software i.e to be used by limited number of users and then based on the feedback either provide product to all users or do the changes and provide solution.

Alpha Testing

Alpha testing is acceptance testing (internal) done at developer's site (where software has been developed). It is done by end users or specialized testing team resembling end users verifying product meets all requirements. Alpha testing is done before beta testing.

Acceptance Testing

Acceptance testing (also called User acceptance testing - UAT) is performed by end user/customers to verify if the solution/product delivered to them meets all requirements, specifications and performs business processes.

• Falls in black-box testing methodology
• Also called validation testing, final testing, application testing
• Can include functional, performance, stress, load testing etc
• Specific test cases (mapped with requirements) created by end user focusing on specific functionality and priority areas with user defined test data
• Success of acceptance testing decides GO/ NO_GO decision for the product

Types of acceptance testing:

• User acceptance testing (UAT)
• Alpha Testing & Beta Testing
• Operational Acceptance Testing

Testing Terminology (Glossary)

Acceptance testing

Ad hoc testing

Agile testing

Alpha testing

Back-to-back testing

Beta testing

Big-bang testing

Black-box testing

Black-box test design technique

Blocked test case

Bottom-up testing

Boundary value

Boundary value analysis

Branch testing

Business process-based testing

Capture/playback tool

Certification

Code coverage

Compliance testing

Component integration testing

Condition testing

Conversion testing

Data driven testing

Database integrity testing

Defect

Defect masking

Defect report

Development testing

Driver

Equivalence partitioning

Error

Error guessing

Exhaustive testing

Exploratory testing

Failure

Functional test design technique

Functional testing

Functionality testing

Heuristic evaluation

High level test case

ISTQB

Incident management tool

Installability testing

Integration testing

Isolation testing

Keyword driven testing

Load testing

Low level test case

Maintenance testing

Monkey testing

Negative testing

Non-functional testing

Operational readiness testing

Pair testing

Peer review

Performance testing

Portability testing

Post-execution comparison

Priority

Quality assurance

Random testing

Recoverability testing

Regression testing

Requirements-based testing

Re-testing

Risk-based testing

Severity

Site acceptance testing

Smoke test

Statistical testing

Stress testing

Stub

Syntax testing

System integration testing

System testing

Test automation

Test case specification

Test design specification

Test environment

Test harness

Test log

Test management tool

Test oracle

Test plan

Test strategy

Test suite

Testware

Thread testing

Top-down testing

Traceability

Usability testing

Use case

Use case testing

Unit test framework

Validation

Verification

Vertical traceability

Volume testing

Walkthrough

White-box testing