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Understanding Negative Testing Cases

Negative testing involves testing software to make it fail in order to show that it does not work properly and to identify faults. It is an important part of the testing process when used alongside positive testing, which aims to show that software works as intended. Negative testing techniques include inputting invalid data, violating assumptions and constraints, and stressing the software in unexpected ways to try to break it in order to improve quality and robustness.

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17 views10 pages

Understanding Negative Testing Cases

Negative testing involves testing software to make it fail in order to show that it does not work properly and to identify faults. It is an important part of the testing process when used alongside positive testing, which aims to show that software works as intended. Negative testing techniques include inputting invalid data, violating assumptions and constraints, and stressing the software in unexpected ways to try to break it in order to improve quality and robustness.

Uploaded by

pushpgoa
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Negative Testing

Explored by: Pushpendra K.


Effectiveness of Test Cases
A test case is said to be effective only when both
positive and negative cases are prepared & executed.

Positive test case: Test to Pass


Negative test case: Test to Fail

So, Negative test cases should be a part of our testing


effort.
Positive Vs. Negative Test Cases
Positive test case:
Testing aimed at showing software works. Also known
as “Test to pass".

Negative test case:


Testing aimed at showing software does not work. Also
known as “Test to fail".
A Positive View of Negative Testing
 It is a core skill of experienced testers and it requires
an exploratory approach to get the best value from
the time spent.

 Negative Testing can find significant failures and


allow overall confidence in the quality of the system.

 Testing the application with negative assumptions to


get a negative result which leads to positive one.

 Can be done for Automation also (jUnit)


Aims of negative testing
 Tests that aim to exercise the functionality that deals with
failure

 The goals is to see how easy it is to break the system, and


having done that, how easy it was to get it up and running
again.

 Discovery of faults that result in significant failures like:


Crashes, Data corruption and Security breaks

 Observation and measurement of a system’s response to


external problems (Networking, Data bandwidth), error
handling & exceptions

 Exposure of software weakness and potential for utilization.


Techniques to derive Negative test cases
 Negative testing is not a test design technique, but rather
an approach or a classification.

 Use formal test design techniques with negative input to


derive tests that can be classified as ‘Negative Tests’.

 Boundary Value Analysis & Equivalence Class Partitioning


 State Transition testing –
 Test against known constraints – e.g. known version
 Failure Mode and Effects analysis -
 Concurrency - two requests, queuing, timeouts & deadlocks
Negative Test Case conditions
 Required Data Entry
 Field Type Test - Special characters
 Field Size Test
 Numeric Bounds Test - BVA
 Date Bounds Test
 Date Validity
 Web Session Testing
 Performance Changes
 Embedded Single Quote
 Error-handling functionality i.e. messaging
 Recovery functionality i.e. fail-over, rollback and restoration
 External (UI) & Internal (DB) data validation
Some more examples…
 Invalid bank transaction
 Violating the order in which the vending machine should be operated
 Simultaneous running of checkpoints for all 50 CDEs
 Try to remove an item from the empty shopping basket
 Power failure when an unsaved document is present in the
application- buffer related issue
Criticisms of Negative Testing
 Negative testing can hurt the project by contributing to
delays and time waste
 (should be done only when all your Positive test
executions are completed & you have time)
 “But that would never happen in normal use”
 “That’s an acceptable failure”
 “Why find a problem we can’t fix?”
 Side Effect occurs due to negative Test case: Long data in
the Textbox gives Fatal error or Java error (occurred in
our application)
Questions

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