Unit 7: Software Testing

Introduction
Testing is the planned process of running software with the intent of discovering errors in the
software. Testing is intended to show that a program does what it is intended to do and to discover
program defects before it is put into use. When you test software, you execute a program using
artificial data. You check the results of the test run for errors, anomalies or information about the
program's non-functional attributes. Testing can reveal the presence of errors, but NOT their
absence. Testing is part of a more general verification and validation process, which also includes
static validation techniques.

It is important to realise that testing is a purposeful process, and is not the accidental discovery of
software bugs. Discovering errors in the software implementation itself is an important aspect to
software testing, but it is not the only aspect. Testing can also be used to discover how well the
software conforms to the software requirements, including performance requirements, usability
requirements, and so on. Understanding how to test software in a methodical manner is a
fundamental skill required in engineering software of acceptable quality.

Goals of Software Testing

i. To demonstrate to the developer and the customer that the software meets its requirements.
a. Leads to validation testing: you expect the system to perform correctly using a given
set of test cases that reflect the system's expected use.
b. A successful test shows that the system operates as intended.
ii. To discover situations in which the behaviour of the software is incorrect, undesirable or does
not conform to its specification.

a. Leads to defect testing: the test cases are designed to expose defects; the test cases
can be deliberately obscure and need not reflect how the system is normally used.

b. A successful test is a test that makes the system perform incorrectly and so exposes a
defect in the system.

Testing can be viewed as an input-output process:

Testing Teams
Many different people involved with the development of a particular piece of software can be involved
in its testing, such as the developers, a team of independent testers, and even the customers
themselves.

The Developers
Testing will always begin with the developers. As they develop individual modules of the software they
will need to determine that what they have developed conforms with the requirements, and that it
functions as expected. Further, the developers will have to test that these modules still function
without error when they have been integrated with each other. However, the developers will often
test the software far more gently than is needed for proper testing, since the developers may already
have pre-conceived expectations concerning how the software they have written behaves. Even
worse, the developers may even have a vested interest in showing that the work they have done
performs correctly and meets the requirements; this works directly against the process of software
testing.

Independent Testing Team

After the developer has produced working code, the code may be passed to an independent testing
team. This is a group of developers who are not responsible for the original development of the
software. This group's sole responsibility is to test the software that they have been given.
Independent testing teams are one solution to the problems that arise from having the original
programmers also test all aspects of the software. Since the testing team did not develop the software,
they will hopefully have less interest in reporting that the software functions better than it does. Also,
teams dedicated to testing software can use more specialised testing frameworks and methodologies
than the developers themselves. The original programmers may not be interested in testing the
usability of the software, or may not have the resources to examine the performance of the software;
the testing team, however, should have these resources. The presence of testing teams does not mean
that the original developers are not involved with the testing at all. They will still test their code as
they develop it, and will be involved with the testing team as the team examines the software and
reports on any errors in the software which they locate. The developer is usually the person
responsible for correcting these errors.

Customers
During iterative and evolutionary development (and agile processes in general), software is frequently
given to the customer for them to examine, report back on, and potentially use.

Verification and Validation

Testing is part of a broader process of software verification and validation (V & V).

• Verification: Are we building the product right? The software should conform to its
specification.
• Validation: Are we building the right product? The software should do what the user really
requires.

The goal of V & V is to establish confidence that the system is good enough for its intended use, which
depends on:

i. Software purpose: the level of confidence depends on how critical the software is to an
organization.
ii. User expectations: users may have low expectations of certain kinds of software.
 iii. Marketing environment: getting a product to market early may be more important than
finding defects in the program.

Inspections and testing

Software inspections involve people examining the source representation with the aim of discovering
anomalies and defects. Inspections do not require execution of a system so may be used before
implementation. They may be applied to any representation of the system (requirements, design
,configuration data, test data, etc.). They have been shown to be an effective technique for discovering
program errors.

Advantages of inspections include:

• During testing, errors can mask (hide) other errors. Because inspection is a static process, you
don't have to be concerned with interactions between errors.
• Incomplete versions of a system can be inspected without additional costs. If a program is
incomplete, then you need to develop specialized test harnesses to test the parts that are
available.
• As well as searching for program defects, an inspection can also consider broader quality
attributes of a program, such as compliance with standards, portability and maintainability.

Inspections and testing are complementary and not opposing verification techniques. Both should be
used during the V & V process. Inspections can check conformance with a specification but not
conformance with the customer's real requirements. Inspections cannot check non-functional
characteristics such as performance, usability, etc.

Stages of Testing
Typically, a commercial software system has to go through three stages of testing:

• Development testing: the system is tested during development to discover bugs and defects.
• Release testing: a separate testing team test 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 environment.

Development testing
Development testing includes all testing activities that are carried out by the team developing the
system:

• Unit testing: individual program units or object classes are tested; should focus on testing the
functionality of objects or methods.

• Component testing: several individual units are integrated to create composite components;
should focus on testing component interfaces.

• System testing: some or all of the components in a system are integrated and the system is
tested as a whole; should focus on testing component interactions.

Unit testing
Unit testing is the process of testing individual components in isolation. It is a defect testing process.
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 functionality.

When testing object classes, tests should be designed to provide coverage of all of the features of the
object:

• Test all operations associated with the object;

• Set and check the value of all attributes associated with the object;
• Put the object into all possible states, i.e. simulate all events that cause a state change.

Whenever possible, unit testing should be automated so that tests are run and checked without
manual intervention. In automated unit testing, you make use of a test automation framework (such
as JUnit) to write and run your program tests. Unit testing frameworks provide generic test classes
that you extend to create specific test cases. They can then run all of the tests that you have
implemented and report, often through some GUI, on the success or otherwise of the tests. An
automated test has three parts:

• A setup part, where you initialize the system with the test case, namely the inputs and
expected outputs.
• A call part, where you call the object or method to be tested.
• An assertion part where you compare the result of the call with the expected result. If the
assertion evaluates to true, the test has been successful if false, then it has failed.

The test cases should show that, when used as expected, the component that you are testing does
what it is supposed to do. If there are defects in the component, these should be revealed by test
cases. This leads to two types of unit test cases:

• The first of these should reflect normal operation of a program and should show that the
component works as expected.
• The other kind of test case should be based on testing experience of where common problems
arise. It should use abnormal inputs to check that these are properly processed and do not
crash the component.

Component testing
Software components are often composite components that are made up of several interacting
objects. You access the functionality of these objects through the defined component interface.
Testing composite components should therefore focus on showing that the component interface
behaves according to its specification. Objectives are to detect faults due to interface errors or invalid
assumptions about interfaces. Interface types include:

• Parameter interfaces: data passed from one method or procedure to another.

• Shared memory interfaces: block of memory is shared between procedures or functions.
• Procedural interfaces: sub-system encapsulates a set of procedures to be called by other sub-
systems.
• Message passing interfaces: sub-systems request services from other sub-systems.

Interface errors can be of any three of the following;

• Interface misuse: a calling component calls another component and makes an error in its use
of its interface e.g. parameters in the wrong order.
• Interface misunderstanding: a calling component embeds assumptions about the behaviour
of the called component which are incorrect.
 • Timing errors: the called and the calling component operate at different speeds and out-of-
date information is accessed.

General guidelines for interface testing:

i. Design tests so that parameters to a called procedure are at the extreme ends of their ranges.
ii. Always test pointer parameters with null pointers.
iii. Design tests which cause the component to fail.
iv. Use stress testing in message passing systems.
v. In shared memory systems, vary the order in which components are activated.

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. 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. 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.

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. The sequence diagrams associated with the use case document the
components and their interactions that are being tested.

Test-driven development
Test-driven development (TDD) is an approach to program development in which you inter-leave
testing and code development. Tests are written before code and 'passing' the tests is the critical
driver of development. This is a differentiating feature of TDD versus writing unit tests after the code
is written: it makes the developer focus on the requirements before writing the code. The code is
developed incrementally, along with a test for that increment. You don't move on to the next
increment until the code that you have developed passes its test. TDD was introduced as part of agile
methods such as Extreme Programming. However, it can also be used in plan-driven development
processes.

TDD example - a string calculator.

The goal of TDD isn't to ensure we write tests by writing them first, but to produce working software
that achieves a targeted set of requirements using simple, maintainable solutions. To achieve this goal,
TDD provides strategies for keeping code working, simple, relevant, and free of duplication.
TDD process includes the following activities:

1. Start by identifying the increment of functionality that is required. This should normally be
small and implementable in a few lines of code.
2. Write a test for this functionality and implement this as an automated test.
3. Run the test, along with all other tests that have been implemented. Initially, you have not
implemented the functionality so the new test will fail.
4. Implement the functionality and re-run the test.
5. Once all tests run successfully, you move on to implementing the next chunk of functionality.

Benefits of test-driven development:

i. Code coverage: every code segment that you write has at least one associated test so all code
written has at least one test.
ii. Regression testing: a regression test suite is developed incrementally as a program is
developed.
iii. Simplified debugging: when a test fails, it should be obvious where the problem lies; the newly
written code needs to be checked and modified.
iv. System documentation: the tests themselves are a form of documentation that describe what
the code should be doing.

Regression Testing
Regression testing is testing the system to check that changes have not 'broken' previously working
code. In a manual testing process, regression testing is expensive but, with automated testing, it is
simple and straightforward. All tests are rerun every time a change is made to the program. Tests must
run 'successfully' before the change is committed.

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 customer
of the system that it is good enough for use. Release testing, therefore, has to show that the system
delivers its specified functionality, performance and dependability, and that it does not fail during
normal use. Release testing is usually a black-box testing process where tests are only derived from
the system specification.

Release testing is a form of system testing. Important differences:

• A separate team that has not been involved in the system development, should be responsible
for release testing.

• System testing by the development team should focus on discovering bugs in the system
(defect testing). The objective of release testing is to check that the system meets its
requirements and is good enough for external use (validation testing).

Requirements Based Testing

Involves examining each requirement and developing a test or tests for it. It is validation rather than
defect testing: you are trying to demonstrate that the system has properly implemented its
requirements.

Scenario Testing
This is an approach to release testing where you devise typical scenarios of use and use these to
develop test cases for the system. Scenarios should be realistic and real system users should be able
to relate to them. If you have used scenarios as part of the requirements engineering process, then
you may be able to reuse them as testing scenarios.

Part of release testing may involve testing the emergent properties of a system, such as performance
and reliability. Tests should reflect the profile of use of the system. Performance tests usually involve
planning a series of tests where the load is steadily increased until the system performance becomes
unacceptable. Stress testing is a form of performance testing where the system is deliberately
overloaded to test its failure behaviour.

User testing
User or customer testing is a stage in the 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. Types of user testing include:

i. Alpha testing: users of the software work with the development team to test the software at
the developer's site.
ii. 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.
iii. 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.

In agile methods, the user/customer is part of the development team and is responsible for making
decisions on the acceptability of the system. Tests are defined by the user/customer and are
integrated with other tests in that they are run automatically when changes are made. Main problem
here is whether or not the embedded user is 'typical' and can represent the interests of all system
stakeholders.