Design Validation Testing
Web Software Testing: Ensuring Web Software Security And Functionality
The software development life cycle contains numerous stages. Software testing is one of the significant phases within the software development cycle (SDCL). Different types of testing are employed in each phase beginning with development till it reaches the market. 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.
Software for web applications is one type of software. 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.
While web software testing is important, there’s always a rush in developing and testing it.There are different methods that the test engineers use to test this software. They are 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.Alpha testing is a replicated or real ready testing by would-be users/customers or a separate testing team on the developers’ location. 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.
After the alpha testing stage is finished, the software advances to the beta phase of testing. The web software should be fully completed by now. The software is released to a restricted number of users for testing before it is officially released. 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.
When software testers or development engineers are code testing they are checking for the presence of software bugs. Because the time involved in web development is small it is important that the software is free of bugs. A popular method used by experienced programmers for bug free coding is the paired-programming.
Paired programming is a software development method in which two programmers work together at one keyboard. The driver types in the code while the observer or navigator reviews each line. 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 performed against heavy loads or inputs such as multiple user log-ins and mail servers to determine the point at which the web-site/application fails or the point when performance degrades. 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.
The testing done to estimate the compatibility of the application with the different interacting hardware of software is the Compatibility testing. This method tests how good the software is in interactions with operating system, peripherals, database, browser etc. It also tests the computing capacity of the hardware platform and the peripherals.
The testing used to validate the conformance to specifications and requirements is the Functional testing. This testing involves performing a sequence of tests to validate the behavior of the software, feature by feature using a large number of normal and abnormal data. The Regression testing the type of testing done to make sure that improvement, defect corrections or any additional changes to the software has not broken down any existing functionality.
When interative methodology is used to develop software regression testing is crucial. In iterative programming, new modules are added to the core module to increase the functionality provided by the application, this needs to be done with the certainty that the added module does not affect the original functionality of the running module. Regression testing is done to find out any of such instances. The above mentioned methods are essential tests to complete the web software testing.
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