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 behaviour 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 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.

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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.

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The weather station object interface

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Weather station testing

• Need to define test cases for reportWeather, calibrate, test, startup

and shutdown.
• Using a state model, identify sequences of state transitions to be
tested and the event sequences to cause these transitions
• For example:
• Shutdown -> Running-> Shutdown
• Configuring-> Running-> Testing -> Transmitting -> Running
• Running-> Collecting-> Running-> Summarizing -> Transmitting -> Running

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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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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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Testing guidelines (sequences)

• Test software with sequences which have only a single value.

• Use sequences of different sizes in different tests.
• Derive tests so that the first, middle and last elements of the
sequence are accessed.
• Test with sequences of zero length.

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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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Component testing

• Software components are often composite components that are

made up of several interacting objects.
• For example, in the weather station system, the reconfiguration component
includes objects that deal with each aspect of the reconfiguration.
• 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.
• You can assume that unit tests on the individual objects within the
component have been completed.

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Interface testing

• Objectives are to detect faults due to interface errors or invalid

assumptions about interfaces.
• Interface types
• 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

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Interface testing

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Interface errors

• 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.

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Interface testing guidelines

• Design tests so that parameters to a called procedure are at

the extreme ends of their ranges.
• Always test pointer parameters with null pointers.
• Design tests which cause the component to fail.
• Use stress testing in message passing systems.
• In shared memory systems, vary the order in which
components are activated.

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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.

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System and component testing

• 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.
• In some companies, system testing may involve a separate testing team with
no involvement from designers and programmers.

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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.

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