Chapter 8 – Software Testing
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Topics covered
Development testing
Test-driven development
Release testing
User testing
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Program testing
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.
Can reveal the presence of errors NOT their
absence.
Testing is part of a more general verification and validation
process, which also includes static validation techniques.
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Program testing goals
To demonstrate to the developer and the customer that
the software meets its requirements.
▪ For custom software, this means that there should be at least
one test for every requirement in the requirements document.
For generic software products, it means that there should be
tests for all of the system features, plus combinations of these
features, that will be incorporated in the product release.
To discover situations in which the behavior of the
software is incorrect, undesirable or does not conform to
its specification.
▪ Defect testing is concerned with rooting out undesirable system
behavior such as system crashes, unwanted interactions with
other systems, incorrect computations and data corruption.
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Validation and defect testing
The first goal 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.
The second goal leads to defect testing
▪ The test cases are designed to expose defects. The test cases in
defect testing can be deliberately obscure and need not reflect
how the system is normally used.
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Testing process goals
Validation testing
▪ To demonstrate to the developer and the system customer that
the software meets its requirements
▪ A successful test shows that the system operates as intended.
Defect testing
▪ To discover faults or defects in the software where its behavior is
incorrect or not in conformance with its specification
▪ A successful test is a test that makes the system perform
incorrectly and so exposes a defect in the system.
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An input-output model of program testing
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Verification vs validation
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.
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V & V confidence
Aim of V & V is to establish confidence that the system is
‘fit for purpose’.
Depends on system’s purpose, user expectations and
marketing environment
▪ Software purpose
• The level of confidence depends on how critical the software is to
an organisation.
▪ User expectations
• Users may have low expectations of certain kinds of software.
▪ Marketing environment
• Getting a product to market early may be more important than
finding defects in the program.
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Inspections and testing
Software inspections Concerned with analysis of
the static system representation to discover problems
(static verification)
▪ May be supplement by tool-based document and code
analysis.
▪ Discussed in Chapter 15.
Software testing Concerned with exercising and
observing product behaviour (dynamic verification)
▪ The system is executed with test data and its operational
behaviour is observed.
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Inspections and testing
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Software inspections
These involve people examining the source
representation with the aim of discovering anomalies and
defects.
Inspections 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.
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Advantages of inspections
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.
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Inspections and testing
Inspections and testing work together, not against each
other, to help ensure quality.
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.
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A model of the software testing process
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Stages of testing
Development testing, where the system is tested during
development to discover bugs and defects.
Release testing, where a separate testing team test a
complete version of the system before it is released to
users.
User testing, where users or potential users of a system
test the system in their own environment.
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Development testing
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Development testing
Development testing includes all testing activities that
are carried out by the team developing the system.
▪ Unit testing, where individual program units or object classes are
tested. Unit testing should focus on testing the functionality of
objects or methods.
▪ Component testing, where several individual units are integrated
to create composite components. Component testing should
focus on testing component interfaces.
▪ System testing, where some or all of the components in a
system are integrated and the system is tested as a whole.
System testing should focus on testing component interactions.
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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.
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Object class testing
Complete test coverage of a class involves
▪ Testing all operations associated with an object
▪ Setting and interrogating all object attributes
▪ Exercising the object in all possible states.
Inheritance makes it more difficult to design object class
tests as the information to be tested is not localised.
Inheritance can make it harder to test classes because
the important details are spread out
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The weather station object interface
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Automated testing
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 of
otherwise of the tests.
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Automated test components
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 claim evaluates to
true, the test has been successful if false, then it has
failed.
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Choosing unit test cases
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 2 types of unit test case:
▪ 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.
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Testing strategies
Partition testing, where you identify groups of inputs that
have common characteristics and should be processed
in the same way.
▪ You should choose tests from within each of these groups.
Guideline-based testing, where you use testing
guidelines to choose test cases.
▪ These guidelines reflect previous experience of the kinds of
errors that programmers often make when developing
components.
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Partition testing
Input data and output results often fall into different
classes where all members of a class are related.
Each of these classes is an equivalence partition or
domain where the program behaves in an equivalent
way for each class member.
Test cases should be chosen from each partition.
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Equivalence partitioning
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Equivalence partitions
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Key points
Testing can only show the presence of errors in a
program. It cannot demonstrate that there are no
remaining faults.
Development testing is the responsibility of the software
development team. A separate team should be
responsible for testing a system before it is released to
customers.
Development testing includes unit testing, in which you
test individual objects and methods component testing
in which you test related groups of objects and system
testing, in which you test partial or complete systems.
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Key points
When testing software, you should try to ‘break’ the software by
using experience and guidelines to choose types of test case that
have been effective in discovering defects in other systems.
Wherever possible, you should write automated tests. The tests are
embedded in a program that can be run every time a change is
made to a system.
Test-first development is an approach to development where tests
are written before the code to be tested.
Scenario testing involves inventing a typical usage scenario and
using this to derive test cases.
Acceptance testing is a user testing process where the aim is to
decide if the software is good enough to be deployed and used in its
operational environment.
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