Week 14

Software Testing
Topics
 Development testing
 Test-driven
development
 Release testing
 User testing
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.
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.
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.
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.
An input-output model of program testing

Input test Inputs

data Ie
causing
anomalou
s
behaviour

System

Outputs which
Output test Oe
results reveal the
presence of
defects
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.
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.
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.
 Software testing Concerned with exercising and
observing product behaviour (dynamic verification)
 The system is executed with test data and its
operational behaviour is observed.
Inspections and testing

Inspection
s

Requiremen Software UML Databas

Program
ts architectur design e
specificatio e models schema
n s

System
prototyp Testin
e g
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.
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.
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.
A model of the software testing process

Test Test Test Test

case dat result report
s a s s

Design Prepare Run Compare

test test program results to
cases data with test test cases
data
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.
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.
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.
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.
The weather station object interface

WeatherStation

identifier
reportWeather ( )
reportStatus ( )
powerSave
(instruments)
remoteControl
(commands) reconfigure
(commands) restart
(instruments) shutdown
(instruments)
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Use-case testing

 The use-cases developed to identify system

interactions can be used as a basis for system
testing.
 Each use case usually involves several
system components so testing the use
case forces these interactions to occur.
 The sequence diagrams associated with the
use case documents the components and
interactions that are being tested.
Collect weather data sequence chart

Weather
information
system
SatComm WeatherStati Commslink WeatherData
s on
request
(report)

acknowledge
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pe (summary) ()
o
r
t send
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acknowledge r

(
)
Testing policies
 Exhaustive system testing is impossible so testing policies
which define the required system test coverage may be
developed.
 Examples of testing policies:
 All system functions that are accessed through menus should
be tested.
 Combinations of functions (e.g. text formatting) that
are accessed through the same menu must be tested.
 Where user input is provided, all functions must be tested
with both correct and incorrect input.
Test-driven development
 Test-driven development (TDD) is an approach
to program development in which you inter-
leave testing and code development.
 Tests are written before code and ‘passing’ the
tests is the critical driver of development.
 You develop code incrementally, along with a test
for that increment. You don’t move on to the next
increment until the code that you have developed
passes its test.
 TDD was introduced as part of agile methods
such as Extreme Programming. However, it can
also be used in plan-driven development
processes.
Test-driven development

Identify pas
s
new
functionalit
y
fai Implement
Write Run l functionality
test test and refactor
TDD process activities

 Start by identifying the increment of

functionality that is required. This should
normally be small and implementable in a few
lines of code.
 Write a test for this functionality and
implement this as an automated test.
 Run the test, along with all other tests that
have been implemented. Initially, you have
not implemented the functionality so the new
test will fail.
 Implement the functionality and re-run the
test.
 Once all tests run successfully, you move
Benefits of test-driven
development
 Code coverage
 Every code segment that you write has at least one
associated test so all code written has at least one
test.
 Regression testing
 A regression test suite is developed incrementally as a
program is developed.
 Simplified debugging
 When a test fails, it should be obvious where the
problem lies. The newly written code needs to be
checked and modified.
 System documentation
 The tests themselves are a form of documentation that
describe what the code should be doing.
Regression testing

 Regression testing is testing the system to

check that changes have not ‘broken’
previously working code.
 In a manual testing process, regression testing is
expensive but, with automated testing, it is
simple and straightforward. All tests are rerun
every time a change is made to the program.
 Tests must run ‘successfully’ before the
change is committed.
Release testing
 Release testing is the process of testing a particular
release of a system that is intended for use outside
of the development team.
 The primary goal of the release testing process is
to convince the supplier of the system that it is
good enough for use.
 Release testing, therefore, has to show that the system
delivers its specified functionality, performance and
dependability, and that it does not fail during normal use.
 Release testing is usually a black-box testing
process where tests are only derived from the
system specification.
Release testing and system testing
 Release testing is a form of system testing.
 Important differences:
 A separate team that has not been involved in the
system development, should be responsible for release
testing.
 System testing by the development team should focus on
discovering bugs in the system (defect testing). The
objective of release testing is to check that the system
meets its requirements and is good enough for external use
(validation testing).
Requirements based testing
 Requirements-based testing involves examining
each requirement and developing a test or tests for
it.
 MHC-PMS requirements:
 If a patient is known to be allergic to any particular
medication, then prescription of that medication shall result
in a warning message being issued to the system user.
 If a prescriber chooses to ignore an allergy warning, they
shall provide a reason why this has been ignored.
Requirements tests
 Set up a patient record with no known allergies. Prescribe medication
for allergies that are known to exist. Check that a warning message is
not issued by the system.
 Set up a patient record with a known allergy. Prescribe the
medication to that the patient is allergic to, and check that the
warning is issued by the system.
 Set up a patient record in which allergies to two or more drugs are
recorded. Prescribe both of these drugs separately and check that the
correct warning for each drug is issued.
 Prescribe two drugs that the patient is allergic to. Check that two
warnings are correctly issued.
 Prescribe a drug that issues a warning and overrule that warning.
Check that the system requires the user to provide information
explaining why the warning was overruled.
Features tested by scenario

 Authentication by logging on to the system.

 Downloading and uploading of specified patient
records to a laptop.
 Home visit scheduling.
 Encryption and decryption of patient records on a
mobile device.
 Record retrieval and modification.
 Links with the drugs database that maintains
side-effect information.
A usage scenario for the MHC-PMS
Kate is a nurse who specializes in mental health care. One of her responsibilities is
to visit patients at home to check that their treatment is effective and that they
are not suffering from medication side -effects.
On a day for home visits, Kate logs into the MHC-PMS and uses it to print her
schedule of home visits for that day, along with summary information about the
patients to be visited. She requests that the records for these patients be
downloaded to her laptop. She is prompted for her key phrase to encrypt the
records on the laptop.
One of the patients that she visits is Jim, who is being treated with medication for
depression. Jim feels that the medication is helping him but believes that it has the
side -effect of keeping him awake at night. Kate looks up Jim’s record and is
prompted for her key phrase to decrypt the record. She checks the drug prescribed
and queries its side effects. Sleeplessness is a known side effect so she notes the
problem in Jim’s record and suggests that he visits the clinic to have his medication
changed. He agrees so Kate enters a prompt to call him when she gets back to the
clinic to make an appointment with a physician. She ends the consultation and the
system re-encrypts Jim’s record.
After, finishing her consultations, Kate returns to the clinic and uploads the records
of patients visited to the database. The system generates a call list for Kate of those
patients who she has to contact for follow-up information and make clinic
Performance testing

 Part of release testing may involve testing the

emergent properties of a system, such as
performance and reliability.
 Tests should reflect the profile of use of the
system.
 Performance tests usually involve planning a
series of tests where the load is steadily
increased until the system performance
becomes unacceptable.
 Stress testing is a form of performance testing
where the system is deliberately overloaded to
test its failure behaviour.
User testing
 User or customer testing is a stage in the testing
process in which users or customers provide input
and advice on system testing.
 User testing is essential, even when
comprehensive system and release testing
have been carried out.
 The reason for this is that influences from the user’s
working environment have a major effect on the
reliability, performance, usability and robustness of a
system. These cannot be replicated in a testing
environment.
Types of user testing
 Alpha testing
 Users of the software work with the development team
to test the software at the developer’s site.
 Beta testing
 A release of the software is made available to users to
allow them to experiment and to raise problems that
they discover with the system developers.
 Acceptance testing
 Customers test a system to decide whether or not it is
ready to be accepted from the system developers and
deployed in the customer environment. Primarily for
custom systems.
The acceptance testing process

Test Test Test Testin

Test
criteri pla result g
s
a n s repor
t
Define Plan Derive Run Negotiat Accept
acceptanc acceptanc acceptanc acceptanc e test or reject
e criteria e testing e tests e tests results system
Stages in the acceptance testing process

 Define acceptance criteria

 Plan acceptance testing
 Derive acceptance tests
 Run acceptance tests
 Negotiate test results
 Reject/accept system
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.
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.