Abstract: This paper describes the different techniques of testing the software. This paper explicitly addresses the idea for testability and the important thing is that the testing itself-not just by saying that testability is a desirable goal, but by showing how to do it. Software testing is the process we used to measure the quality of developed software. Software Testing is not just about error finding and their solution but also about checking the client requirements and testing that those requirements are met by the software solution. It is the most important functional phase in the Software Development Life Cycle(SDLC) as it exhibits all mistakes, flaws and errors in the developed software. Without finding these errors, technically termed as ‘bugs,’ software development is not considered to be complete. Hence, software testing becomes an important parameter for assuring quality of the software product. We discuss here about when to start and when to stop the testing of software. How errors or Bugs are formed and rectified. How software testing is done i.e. with the help of Team Work.
Testing is a process used to identify the correctness, completeness and quality of developed computer software. With in mind that , testing can never completely establish the correctness of Computer software . There are many approaches for software testing, but effective testing on complex products is essentially a process of investigation, not merely a matter of creating and following rote procedure. The definition of testing is "the process of questioning a product in order to evaluate it", where the
"questions" are things the checker tries to do with the product, and the product answers with its behaviour in reaction to the probing of the tester. Although most of the intellectual processes of testing are nearly identical to that of review or inspection, the word testing is not to mean the dynamic analysis of the product—putting the product through its paces. The quality of the application can and normally does vary widely from system to system but some of the common quality attributes include reliability, stability, portability, maintainability and usability. Testing helps is verifying and validating if the Software is working as it is intended to be working. Things involve using Static and Dynamic methodologies to Test the application. Because of the fallibility of its human designers and its own abstract, complex nature, software development must be accompanied by quality assurance activities. It is not unusual for developers to spend 40% of the total project time on testing. For life-critical software (e.g. flight control, reactor monitoring), testing can cost 3 to 5 times as much as all other activities combined. The destructive nature of testing requires that the developer discard preconceived notions of the correctness of his/her developed software. The importance of software testing and its impact on software cannot be underestimated. Software testing is a fundamental component of software quality assurance and represents a review of specification, design and coding.
A. Software Testing Fundamentals:
Testing is the one step in the software process that can be seen by the developer as destructive instead of constructive. Software engineers are typically constructive people and testing requires them to overcome the concepts of correctness and deal with conflicts when errors are identified.
B. Testing Objectives Include:
1) It is a process to finding the intent of Error .
2) A test case is called to be a good when it discovered the undiscovered error.
3) A test is successful when all errors are uncovers an as yet undiscovered error.
Testing should systematically uncover different classes of errors in a minimum amount of time and with a minimum amount of effort. One more benefit of testing is that it demonstrates that the software appears to be working as stated in the specifications. The data collected through testing can also provide an indication of the software's reliability and quality. But, testing cannot show the absence of defect . it can only show that software defects are present.
C. When Testing should be started?
Early Testing in life cycle can reduce the error . Test cases are associated with every phase of development. The goal of Software Tester is to find bugs, find them as early as possible, and make them sure they are fixed.The number one cause of Software bugs is the Specification. There are several reasons specifications are the largest bug producer.
In many point or instance the specification isn’t written. Other reasons may be that the spec isn’t thorough enough, it’s constantly changing, or it’s not communicated well to the entire team. Planning software is vitally important. If it’s not done correctly bugs will be created. The next largest source of bugs is the Design, That’s where the programmers lay the plan for their Software. Compare it to an architect creating the blue print for the building, Bugs occur here for the same reason they occur in the specification. It’s rushed, changed, or not well communicated. Coding errors may be more familiar to you if you are a programmer. Typically these can be traced to the Software complexity, poor documentation, schedule pressure or just plain dump mistakes. It’s important to note that many bugs that appear on the surface to be programming errors can really be traced to specification. The other category is the catch-all for what is left. Some bugs can blamed for false positives, conditions that were thought to be bugs but really weren’t. There may be duplicate bugs, multiple ones that resulted from the square root cause. Some bugs can be traced to Testing errors.
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