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Web Software Testing: Ensuring Web Software Security and Functionality
By OnTopic | December 17, 2009
The software development life cycle (SDLC) is composed of various stages. Software testing is an important stage within the software development cycle (SDCL). A variety of testing methods are used beginning with the application’s development until it gets the marketing stage. These methods are employed during various stages of the SDLC. The software itself also comes in different varieties, which all require testing before they’re released on the market.
One variety is software for web applications. The importance of this type of software has increased rapidly since the arrival of the Internet. Most security risks come from Internet. Therefore it’s crucial to test the software thoroughly prior to releasing it on the market.
Even though the testing of web software is vital, there is at all times rush in building and testing those application due to time constraints. In the design and development stages, testing engineers utilize different groups or types of tests such as code testing, load testing, compatibility testing, functional testing and regression testing.
The web software is usually released by means of a model of software release known as alpha/beta testing.The first stage or alpha testing takes place at the developers’ site where either potential users/customers or a purposely created indepent test team will interact with a simulated or actual operational version of the software being tested. This testing will be upon incomplete software and will be tested for small parts of the software. Software that passed the alpha test will not be released till all the major functionalities of the software are built and tested.
Beta testing is done by a limited amount of users that can use the software before its official release takes place. Since the web site design uses HTML coding, it’s easy to integrate individual web pages on site; hence the alpha/beta method is usually not used for website development This means they can build and test one page at a time. After completion they can move onto the next one, with each page independent of each other.
Code testing refers to the process where the testing or development engineer verifies the code and make sure that there are no software bugs. Web development is a very rapid process so the abscence of bugs is required. Paired-programming is one of the popular methods used by highly qualified technicians to achieve error free coding .
The Paired programming is a method in software development where two programmers work simultaneously at one keyboard. The developer typing the code is called the driver while the programmer that checks every line of code as it is produced is called the observer or the navigator. Support for this methodology is provided by some research data produced by Laurie Williams at University of Utah in Salt Lake City. According to this research paired programmers produce code with 15% less bugs while only being 15% slower than individual programmers.
The testing process continues through out the software development cycle so that at the time of final release it is free of bugs. Load testing is used to check if a web-site/application will fail or loss performance under the added pressure of heavy loads or imputs from multiple users log-in, mail servers, etc. This type of testing will help to arrive at statistics such as how many users the site will sustain at the same time, the quantity of communication it will hold and the reaction time under various circumstances.
Compatibility testing needs to be carried out to asses the software compatibility with the software and hardware that it may interact with. This includes testing compatibility with operating systems, database, browsers, peripherals and backwards compatibility.
Functional testing confirms its specifications and accurately performs all of the required tasks. This involves doing a series of tests that perform a feature by feature validation of behavior, utilizing a wide range of normal and erroneous input data. Regression testing is carried out to check that any changes made to the code in order to enhance it or to fix defects has not affected any functionality.
When interative methodology is used to develop software regression testing is crucial. In this type of development, the developer adds another module with some functionality to the existing module that’s running. One should make sure that adding this module does not ruin the existing functionality. All the types of test mentioned above are necessary to provide complete web software testing.
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