Commissioning

Software Testing is evaluation of the software against requirements gathered from users and system specifications. Testing is conducted at the phase level in software development life cycle or at module level in program code. Software testing comprises of Validation and Verification.

Testing can either be done manually or using an automated testing tool:

• Manual – This testing is performed without taking help of automated testing tools. The software tester prepares test cases for different sections and levels of the code, executes the tests and reports the result to the manager.

Manual testing is time and resource consuming. The tester needs to confirm whether or not right test cases are used. Major portion of testing involves manual testing.

• Automated – This testing is a testing procedure done with aid of automated testing tools. The limitations with manual testing can be overcome using automated test tools.

A test needs to check if a webpage can be opened in Internet Explorer. This can be easily done with manual testing. But to check if the web-server can take the load of 1 million users, it is quite impossible to test manually.

There are software and hardware tools which helps tester in conducting load testing, stress testing, regression testing.

Tests can be conducted based on two approaches –

• Functionality testing
• Implementation testing

When functionality is being tested without taking the actual implementation in concern it is known as black-box testing. The other side is known as white-box testing where not only functionality is tested but the way it is implemented is also analyzed.

Exhaustive tests are the best-desired method for a perfect testing. Every single possible value in the range of the input and output values is tested. It is not possible to test each and every value in real world scenario if the range of values is large.

The software is compiled as product and then it is tested as a whole. This can be accomplished using one or more of the following tests:

• Functionality testing– Tests all functionalities of the software against the requirement.
• Performance testing– This test proves how efficient the software is. It tests the effectiveness and average time taken by the software to do desired task. Performance testing is done by means of load testing and stress testing where the software is put under high user and data load under various environment conditions.
• Security & Portability– These tests are done when the software is meant to work on various platforms and accessed by number of persons.

When the software is ready to hand over to the customer it has to go through last phase of testing where it is tested for user-interaction and response. This is important because even if the software matches all user requirements and if user does not like the way it appears or works, it may be rejected.