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Monday, January 30, 2017

What is System Testing

System testing is actually a series of different tests whose sole purpose is to exercise the full computer based system.

System testing falls under the black box testing category of software testing. System testing involves the external workings of the software from the users perspective.

What do you verify in System Testing ?

System testing involves testing the software code for following

Testing on fully integrated applications in order to test how components interact with one another and with the system as a whole. This is also called End to End scenario testing.
Very thorough testing of every input in the application to check for required outputs.
Testing of the user’s experience with the application from start to finish.
That is a very basic description of what is involved in system testing. You need to build detailed test cases and test suites that test each aspect of the application as seen from the outside without looking at the actual source code.

The Software Testing Hierarchy

As with almost any technical process, software testing has a prescribed order in which things should be done. The following is a list of software testing categories arranged in chronological order. These are the steps taken to fully test new software in preparation for marketing it:

Unit testing – testing performed on each module or block of code during development. Unit testing is normally done by the programmer who writes the code.
Integration testing – testing done before, during and after integration of a new module into the main software package. This involves testing of each individual code module. One piece of software can contain several modules which are often created by several different programmers. It is crucial to test each module’s effect on the entire program model.
System testing – testing done by a professional testing agent on the completed software product before it is introduced to the market.
Acceptance testing – beta testing of the product done by the actual end users.

Types of System Testing

There are more than 50 types of System Testing. For an exhaustive list of software testing types click here. Below we have listed typical types of system testing a large software development company use.

Usability Testing – Usability testing is done to determine whether or not the software is going to be easy enough for the targeted user
Stress Testing – Also known as load testing, stress testing is necessary to know that a software solution will perform under real life situations.
Regression Testing – Regression testing involves testing done to make sure none of the changes made over the course of the development process have caused new bugs. It also makes sure no old bugs appear from the addition of new software modules over time.
Recovery Testing – Recovery testing is done to demonstrate a software solution is reliable, trustworthy and can successfully recoup from possible crashes.
Migration Testing – Migration testing is done to ensure that the software can be moved from older system infrastructures to current system infrastructures without any issues.
Functional Testing – Also known as functional completeness testing, functional testing involves trying to think of any possible missing functions. Testers might make a list of additional functionalities that a product could have to improve it during functional testing.
Hardware/Software Testing – IBM refers to Hardware/Software testing as “HW/SW Testing”. This is when the tester focuses his/her attention on the interactions between the hardware and software during system testing.

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