Web Software Testing: Ensuring Web Software Security and Functionality
The software development life cycle (SDLC) is composed of various stages. Software performance testing is one of the most essential stages. Different types of testing are employed in each phase beginning with development till it reaches the market. From the initial development of the application until it reaches the maketing phase different testing types will be used. In addition, all the different versions of the software have to be tested before they are delivered to either the costumer or the target market.
One variety is software for web applications. With the advent of the Internet web software has significantly increased in importance, as the Internet has had a substantial impact on our daily lives. Because of the high impact Internet has on our daily lives any web software is carefully tested before launching in order to reduce the associated security risks that originate from the use of the Internet.
While web software testing is important, there’s always a rush in developing and testing it. 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 standanrd pattern for the realease of web software consists of two main stages, alpha and 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. The software is incomplete at this point and testing is done only for small modules of the software.Alpha testing is often used for ready to use software as a type of in-house acceptance testing. After being alpha tested software will only be released when all the main functional sections have been both coded and tested.
Beta testing is done by a limited amount of users that can use the software before its official release takes place. The alpha/beta testing method is not the standard procedure when testing web site design. This is because HTML coding makes it very easy to design independent web pages that can afterwards being easily integrated so the design team can code and test each page independently.
In code testing the software testing or development engineer examines the codes for software bugs. Because the time involved in web development is small it is important that the software is free of bugs. Paired-programming is one of the popular methods used by highly qualified technicians to achieve error free coding .
Two coders working at a single workstation it is at the core of paired programming. One programmer types in the code when the other person observes and reviews each line at the same time. The judgment behind taking up this method is the following. The Economist proclaims that, “Laurie Williams of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City has shown that paired programmers are only 15% slower than two independent individual programmers, but produce 15% fewer bugs.”
As the development process continues the software is tested repeatedly. By the time it’s finally released the software is free of bugs. Load testing is done to see at what point the application fails or the performance reduces when under heavy loads such as multiple users on or heavy server traffic. The testing documents the number of users the site will support simultaneously, the number of transactions it can handle and its response time under various conditions or traffic flows.
Compatibility testing evaluates the application’s compatibility with the computing environment like the operating system, database, browser compatibility, backwards compatibility, computing capacity of the hardware platform and compatibility of the peripherals.
Functional testing asses the alignment between the application and its specifications checking that it provides all the required functions. To do that an extense range of both normal and erronous data will be imput to validate the behaviour caused by each of the software features Regression testing is performed to ensure that enhancements, defect repairs or other changes to the software have not disrupted any existing functionality.
Regression testing is an important testing method when the software development method is iterative. Iterative software development is a method in which new functionality is added to existing software. In this case one should make sure that the new addition has not affected any of the existing functionality. Regression testing is performed for the purpose of discovering regression bugs. The above tests are essential for completing web software testing.
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