Web Software Testing: Ensuring Web Software Security and Functionality
The software development life cycle (SDLC) is composed of various stages. Software performance testing is an important stage within the software development cycle (SDCL). A variety of testing methods are used beginning with the application’s development until it gets the marketing stage. From the initial development of the application until it reaches the maketing phase different testing types will be used. Moreover there are different varieties of the software that needs to be tested before it is released to the costumer.
One variety is software for web applications. With the advent of the Internet web software has significantly increased in importance, as the Internet has had a substantial impact on our daily lives. Because of the high impact Internet has on our daily lives any web software is carefully tested before launching in order to reduce the associated security risks that originate from the use of the Internet.
The time available to develop and test web software is always limited. While the web software is being designed and developed it is also being tested by the testings engineers using different types of tests. The different types of tests can be grouped in code testing, load testing, compatibility testing, functional testing and regression testing.
The web software is usually released using a pattern of software release known as alpha/beta testing.This is a simulated or actual operational test conducted by potential users or an independent test team at the developers’ site. The software is incomplete at this point and testing is done only for small modules of the software.Alpha testing is often used for ready to use software as a type of in-house acceptance testing. Software that has been alpha tested cannot be released until all the major functional parts have been coded and tested.
Beta testing is done by a limited amount of users that can use the software before its official release takes place. In case of website design it is easy to put together the various pages as the website design uses HTML. So the alpha/beta technique is generally not used for website development. This means they can build and test one page at a time. After completion they can move onto the next one, with each page independent of each other.
When software testers or development engineers are code testing they are checking for the presence of software bugs. It’s essential for the software to be free of bugs because the web development process is very quick. Paired-programming is one of the popular methods used by highly qualified technicians to achieve error free coding .
Two coders working at a single workstation it is at the core of paired programming. The driver types in the code while the observer or navigator reviews each line. This strategy is appealing because fewer bugs are produced. According to The Economist, “Laurie Williams of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City has shown that paired programmers are only 15% slower than two independent individual programmers, but produce 15% fewer bugs.”
The testing process continues through out the software development cycle so that at the time of final release it is free of bugs. Load testing is performed against heavy loads or inputs such as multiple user log-ins and mail servers to determine the point at which the web-site/application fails or the point when performance degrades. Load testing will provide information regarding the amount of users that could connect simustaneosly to a site, the number of transactions that the system can cope at the same time and its responsiveness under different circumstances or amount of traffic.
Compatibility testing evaluates the application’s compatibility with the computing environment like the operating system, database, browser compatibility, backwards compatibility, computing capacity of the hardware platform and compatibility of the peripherals.
Functional testing confirms its specifications and accurately performs all of the required tasks. This involves doing a series of tests that perform a feature by feature validation of behavior, utilizing a wide range of normal and erroneous input data. Regression testing is carried out to check that any changes made to the code in order to enhance it or to fix defects has not affected any functionality.
Regression testing is an important testing method when the software development method is iterative. In this type of development, the developer adds another module with some functionality to the existing module that’s running. One should make sure that adding this module does not ruin the existing functionality. Regression testing is performed for the purpose of discovering regression bugs. The above tests are essential for completing web software testing.
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