Chapter 8 – Software Testing

Lecture 1

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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

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An input-output model of program testing

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Verification vs validation

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V & V confidence

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Inspections and testing

 Software inspectionsConcerned 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 testingConcerned 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

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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

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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

 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

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Object class testing

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The weather station object interface

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Weather station testing

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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 assertion evaluates to
true, the test has been successful if false, then it has
failed.

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Unit test effectiveness

 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

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Equivalence partitioning

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Testing guidelines (sequences)

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General testing guidelines

 Choose inputs that force the system to generate all error

messages
 Design inputs that cause input buffers to overflow
 Repeat the same input or series of inputs numerous
times
 Force invalid outputs to be generated
 Force computation results to be too large or too small.

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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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