TEST FORCE FAQ’S

1. what is alpha testing?

Alpha is the point where the product is stable enough to meet your entrance criteria but not stable enough to let
an end-user see it.

2. what is beta testing and pre-beta testing?

Beta is where the product has most of teh functionality and features of tehmajor release but still has some
missing and there are several bugs in the product, but you want to have some feedback from your end-users.

Pre-beta is the same as alpha for people who have never herad of alpha and
don't know any Greek.

3. what is scalability testing?

it is testing to see if a product is scalable. This means rather than one server, database, middleware layer, or
web server, you try to have two or more of each.

Your goal is to be able to test each computer in the farm and verify that data is correctly distributed across all
nodes equally.

4 Severity Guidelines:

Severity Description.
Blocker/show Blocks development and/or testing work. This also includes the incorrect or
stopper invalid installation steps. System hangs when run, not able to use the
application due to poor user interface. This is usually showstopper case and
needs the quickest turn around time from the support group .
Critical Crashes, loss of data, severe memory leak. Out of many features, one of the
features is not working.
Major Any major loss of functionality. Coding standards not followed in many
programs. Logic not taken care of as per requirements.
Defects limited to unusual or rare configurations, which, if they occurred in all or
most configurations would be classified as “Critical”.

Normal Some part of the functionality is missing. Poor but usable user interface.
Problem where easy workaround is present. Field validations of all sorts
including the check for mandatory fields and Date-Time fields.
Minor Just an isolated defect. Errors related to rounding, truncation etc.

Trivial Cosmetic problem like misspelled words, misaligned text, blinking, cursor
position etc.
Enhancements Change Request of any type and other nice to have features.

5.Difference between QA & QC

-Quality Control is a process directed at validating that a specific deliverable meets standards, is error
free, and is the best deliverable that can be produced. It is a responsibility internal to the team.

-Quality control is designed to detect and correct defects. It is defined by those activities that find and correct
flaws.

-Quality Assurance is oriented toward preventing defects. It is defined by those activities that modify the
development processes to prevent the introduction of flaws.

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- QA, on the other hand, is a review with a goal of improving the process as well as the deliverable. QA
is often an external process. QA is an effective approach to producing a high quality product. One
aspect is the process of objectively reviewing project deliverables and the processes that produce them
(including testing), to identify defects, and then making recommendations for improvement based on the
reviews. The end result is the assurance that the system and application is of high quality, and that
the process is working. The achievement of quality goals is well within reach when organizational
strategies are used in the testing process. From the client's perspective, an application's quality is high
if it meets their expectations.

6.What is difference between ISO 9000 and ISO 9003.

What is IEEE 829
 
 ISO9000 Is a Guideline procedural document that describes what is quality, advocates "You describe
Organizational policy and expects everyone in the Organization to know about Organizational quality policies
and procedures and follow ur procedures".
 
Where as ISO9003 was a Standard, prescribed for organizations that are engaged only in the service,
Installation and deployment Companies, that is who do not undertake any Design or Production work but mere
service work. However these standards namely ISO9001, 9002, and 9003 were relevant prior to year 2000. In
the post 2000 we have only one comprehensive standard named ISO9001-2000 and organizations can seek
exemption for the works that they are not engaged in.
 
IEEE829 is the Test Document standard wherein they have prescribed the formats for every aspect of Testing
namely Test Plan, Test case, and defect Tracking.
7.What are the points should cover in Manual Testing.( If it is Web Based Project )
Some standards while testing web application
1 What are the expected loads on the server 2 who is the target audience? What kind of browsers will they be
using?
3 What kinds of security (firewalls, encryptions, passwords, etc.) Will be required and what is it expected to
do?
4 Pages should be 3-5 screens max unless content is tightly focused on a single topic. If larger, provide
internal links within the page.
5 The page layouts and design elements should be consistent throughout a site, so that it's clear to the user
that they're still within a site.
6 Pages should be as browser-independent as possible, or pages should be provided or generated based on
the browser-type.
7 All pages should have links external to the page; there should be no dead-end pages.

8.What is your defect reporting system?

Bugzilla, Perfect Tracker, Harpoon, TrackWeb, Problem Tracker (any other which other PL/TLs worked on).
We should say here that defect reporting systems - while different – all are used to enter issues, assign to
developers, track the progress of the resolution (ire “to be fixed in build x.x.x) and to be routed back to the qa
engineer for verification of fix)

9.How you confirm the testing is completed?

Testing is potentially an infinite process. Complete testing means have run all possible tests, which will never
finish. But I can say testing is completed on any application when I have done all the major functionality testing,
and any additional tests will not significantly change the story. (Testing is completed when all identified and
implied use cases have been carried out through the execution of positive and negative test cases. It is import
to pre-identify these identified and implied use cases prior to the initiation of testing.

Quality Assurance teams need to make recommendations to release management and senior management as
to the quality of the product at any given time, but it is the final decision of release management or senior
management when to release the application. Quality Assurance can and should provide all inputs and data to
allow those mentioned groups to make an informed decision weighing marketing and end-user needs along with
acceptable defect rates as important factors.)

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11.What are the major facts involved in installation testing?

1. Establishing the preferred environment – software, hardware, and memory size, processing size and
network configurations.
2. Installing the application per the steps outlined in the installation guide. Correcting the user guide as issues
are reported (i.e. where installation fails due to improper instructions)
3. Performing de-installation.
4. Attempting to install the application on top of a current installation.
5. Attempting to install an older version of the application on a newer version.
6. Attempting to install the application on an environment not ideally suited or prepared properly. Are we
receiving the correct warning and informational message?

12.What is the process of requirement study?

1. Examining the functional requirements document or any materials available, which outline the intended
usage of the system.
2. Examine the environmental needs or variations on which the system should operate.
3. Take in-depth analysis of use cases to determine the specified an implied usage of the application.
4. Begin developing test cases based on initial understanding and mapping those cases to the use cases and
functional requirements document. Listing the section of the functional requirements document against the
developed test cases does this.
5. Provide initial analysis to management or others for review
6. Modify and add to initial analysis to develop comprehensive and clear understanding of the application

13.Describe me the different types of database errors, which may encounter during web application
testing?

Some common database errors include:

1. Field Name problems:

a. Do not name a field date. It will create problems.
A query like
select * from employees where date=#1/17/98#
will fail even though it is syntactically correct because date is a forbidden name.

Rename the field, so the query could look like

"select * from employees where hiredate=#1/17/98#
and you are "out of the woods"

b. Field name with spaces

A field name that has embedded spaces will create problems if you don't surround it with square brackets when
referencing it in the query.

A query like
select * from employees where state of residence='MD'
will fail even though it is syntactically correct because state of residence is a field with spaces in the name.

A query like
select * from employees where [state of residence]='MD'
will succeed because the fieldname is delimited properly.

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2. Syntax Errors
a. Text Fields get surrounded by  ' ' and numeric fields do not!

A query like:
select * from employees where city=Rockville and State=MD and yearsresiding>9 will fail because the
text fields were not delimited properly.

A query like:
select * from employees where city='Rockville' and State='MD' and yearsresiding>9
succeeds.
b. Date fields get surrounded by  # #

A query like:
select * from employees where birthdate>1/1/1966
will fail because the date fields were not delimited properly.

A query like:
select * from employees where birthdate>#1/1/1966#
succeeds.

14.How you identify the test cases for Installation testing if the product having silent installation?

Silent installation allows you to use a file to predefine all the answers that you would normally supply to the
setup program interactively. Therefore, in order to test silent installation, we will develop all identified
variations of positive test cases as well as negative test case and create various input files to be used.
Calling the various files over time, we can identify the outcome of running the various files.

15.On what basis you conclude the performance of the application?

As long as the response time is within the limit for the prescribed load (number of users) that is expected
by client? Performance of the application is good.

16.What are the different behaviors that you observe during performance testing?

1) As load increases (i.e. the # of users) the response time growing.

2) Utilization of Memory to 100%
3) Utilization of CPU to 100%
4) Log files size growing and making system to crash.

17.What is your defect tracking procedure?

1. Identify, Investigate and Report.

2. Reporting consists of entering the date, build number, severity, application area, steps to reproduce,
error found, and expected results.
3. Issues are then routed to developers either by qa based on product area or are farmed out to
developers through a central source (QA manager, development manager etc.)
4. Issues are marked as “fixed” or “fixed in build x.x.x by developers and assigned back to the qa engineer
who reported the issue.
5. When new builds arrive, qa engineers should query or check their queue to see what issues are re-
assigned for fix verification.
6. Issues are retested and either “closed” or re-opened with additional information provided.

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18.Difference between Oracle and SQL?

Oracle SQL
Oracle runs on many platforms SQL on Windows only
Oracle includes IFS (Internet File System), Java SQL is more of a pure database
integration
JDBC support is much better in Oracle Microsoft is working on it
Oracle natively supports proprietary connections, SQL natively supports ODBC, OLEDB, XML, XML
JDBC. Not sure about XML support though Query, XML updates
Oracle is command-line SQL Server is much easier to administrate, with
GUI and command- line tools
Oracle using multiprocessor SQL basically using multithreading concept
Oracle, a large 100 GB table can be seamlessly There is no partitioning in SQL Server
partitioned at the database level into range partitions.
For example, an invoice table can be partitioned into
monthly partitions. Such partitioned tables and
partitioned indexes give performance and maintenance
benefits and are transparent to the application
Object types Exists in Oracle Some Object types missing in SQL Server
Example
a. You cannot declare public or private synonyms.
b. There is no such thing as independent
sequence objects.
c. There are no packages; i.e., collections of
procedures and functions.
d. No "before" event triggers (only "after" event
triggers) and no row triggers (only statement)

19.How do you communicate with the clients when you find a bug?
We report the bug in BTS (client supplied or owned by us) with detailed steps, if needed will support with
screen shot. And inform the same to the client in the daily status report by giving the Bug id.

20.What do you do when you find a bug and not sure that it is really a bug?

First we go through the Functional Documents and also consult with developers and make sure it’s a bug. If
it is a bug then we will try to reproduce the bug and report the same in BTS, if it is not a bug then we ignore
it.
21.Compatibility test, OS compatibility, Browser compatibility?
a. Some times a bug found in NS is not reproducible in IE. Why?

Netscape handles images and graphics in a different way (need to place tech details here) so, often pages
built in html

Or If the HTML code is uses DHTML that is not supported by Netscape (i.e. Div tag) such times is only
reproducible on Netscape not in IE.

b. Did you experience any bugs specific to OS. If yes why?

c. Where do you find more bugs in IE or NS and why? Netscape, 1) It should be Well formed.

2) Do not support DHTML and Active X controls.

d. What kind of bugs you find mostly in IE and not in NS or vice versa?

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22.Can you degrade a browser version from IE 6.0 to 5.0?

Yes we can degrade from Latest version installed to the previous version installed from Add and remove
Program of control panel. If we do not have option to degrade from Add and remove Program of control
panel we can degrade from the following path and command.
"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IE Uninstall\w2kexcp" –u
23. After installation of any application, how do you check whether it's installed properly or not? Do you
go to the registry and check and update them?

After installation of any application we check it from StartPrograms or we also check in Add Remove
Programs of control panel and if necessary we also check in registry entries. It’s not advisable to edit your
registry unless it is absolutely necessary. If there is an error in your registry, your computer may not function
properly. If it is necessary we can edit the registry entries based on the instruction from the application support
team.

Note: If this happens, you can restore the registry to the same version you were using when you last
successfully started your computer.

24. What do you know about registry settings?

Registry is a database repository for information about a computer's configuration. The registry contains
information that Windows 2000 continually references during operation, such as:
1) Profiles for each user.
2) The programs installed on the computer and the types of documents each can create.
3) Property settings for folders and program icons.
4) What hardware exists on the system?
5) Which ports are being used?

The registry is organized hierarchically as a tree and is made up of keys and their subkeys, hives, and value
entries.
25.What is difference between Localization and Internalization?
Software localization is the process of adapting a software program, to a specific locale, i.e., to its language,
standards and cultural norms as well as to the needs and expectations of a specific target market. A properly
localized product also meets all the legal requirements in force in the user’s region. The process of adapting
text and cultural content to specific target audiences in specific locations is much broader than just the
linguistic process of translation. Cultural, content and technical issues must also be taken into account.

Software internationalization is the process of ensuring at a technical/design level that a product can be
easily localized. Internationalization is thus part of globalization.

Software globalization is the process of making all the necessary technical, financial, managerial,
personnel, marketing, and other enterprise decisions necessary to facilitate software localization. Products
have to be globalized before they are localized. A well-globalized product is one that has been enabled at a
technical level for localization. In other words a globalized product does not require remedial engineering or
redesign, as opposed to adoption to a specific local language or platform.

26.What are the main differences between IE and NS?

Internet Explorer Netscape

Microsoft developed the IE on ActiveX Netscape is developed on Plug-ins technology
technology. (i.e. Netscape do not support Active X
components). You must install the plug-in and
restart the browser before the plug-in will
become effective for NS 4.78 and lower.
Supports DHTML (i.e. Div tag) Supports layers

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Don’t check for Well formed It should be Well formed

27.What sort of testing you do in functional testing?

Technically, functional testing can also be described as black box testing. The test is done from the point of
view of the user, not the designer. The qa engineer only knows the inputs and what the expected outcomes
should be and not how the system should function. This provides an unbiased test, as the tester and designer
are independent of each other. However, AppLabs does take functional testing further, through the
investigation of the issues identified. Being QA organization, our testers will work – wherever & whenever
possible - to examine and identify the root cause of an issue so that development may spend time fixing the
error, rather than performing additional investigation.

Note: we are sometimes limited to only pure functional testing when we are connecting to staging or qa servers
and database located at our customer location and where no connect has been provided to us by the customer.
This is not necessarily a negative situation.

28.Explain about test plans?

A document describing the following information: General description of the project, its objectives, and the QA
test schedule.
Resource requirements include hardware, software and staff responsibilities. Features to be tested, as well as
features not to be tested.
Details for the test approach: Lists of test deliverables such as test cases and test scripts. References to related
test plans (which focus on specific topics) and project documentation.
Dependencies and/or risks. Descriptions of how bugs will be tracked Milestone criteria.
Lists of required reviewers who must provide approval of the test plan.

29.What's the difference between Test plan and Test Strategy?

Test plan is defined above
Test Strategy is part of Test plan
30. What do you do when developer doesn't agree with the bug posted?

We will address the bug with the detailed steps, if needed with a screen shot and avi file. We will sit with the
developer and show the steps followed. We will also review the stated functional requirements to ensure the
believed expected results are in line with the stated functionality. If debate still occurs, we should raise the
issue in scheduled triage meetings - conducted by the development and qa staff. Based on the outcome of
discussion, the bug may be marked as invalid.

31. Explain about +ve testing and -ve Testing with examples?

Positive testing means testing the application's functions with valid input and verifying the outputs are correct.
Example 1: If we have Text field, which is suppose to accept only numeric characters, the Test data for testing
will be any numeric number (ex 115).
Example 2: Continuing with the word processing example, a positive test for the printing function might be to
print a document containing both text and graphics to a printer that is online, filled with paper and for which the
correct drivers are installed.

Negative testing means exercising application functionality using a combination of invalid inputs, unexpected
operating conditions and other "out-of-bounds" scenarios.
Example 1: If we have Text field that is suppose to accept only numeric characters, the Test data for testing will
be any non-numeric number (ex abc or #%).
Example 2: Continuing the word processing example, a negative test for the printing function might be to
disconnect the printer from the computer while a document is printing. What probably should happen in this
scenario is a plain-English error message appears, informing the user what happened and instructing him/her
on how to remedy the problem. What might happen, instead, is the word processing software simply hangs up
or crashes because the "abnormal" loss of communications with the printer isn't handled properly.

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Note: We can say positive testing makes sure the system does what it's supposed to do, negative testing just as
importantly make sure it doesn't do what it's not supposed to do.

32. When do you know that enough testing is done on the project?

Testing is potentially an infinite process. Complete testing means have to run all possible tests, which will never
finish. But I can say enough testing is done any application when I have done all the major functionality testing,
and any additional tests will not significantly change the story. (Testing is completed when all identified and
implied use cases have been carried out through the execution of positive and negative test cases. It is import
to pre-identify these identified and implied use cases prior to the initiation of testing.

Quality Assurance teams need to make recommendations to release management and senior management as
to the quality of the product at any given time, but it is the final decision of release management or senior
management when to release the application. Quality Assurance can and should provide all inputs and data to
allow those mentioned groups to make an informed decision weighing marketing and end-user needs along with
acceptable defect rates as important factors.)

33. What is Cyclomatic Complexity, can you explain about this?

Cyclomatic Complexity is a software metric that provides a quantitative measure of the logical complexity of a
program. When this metric is used in the context of the basis path testing method, the value computed for
Cyclomatic Complexity defines the number of independent paths in the basis set of a program and provides us
with an upper bound for the number of tests that must be conducted to ensure that all statements have been
executed at least once.

34. What is regression test? How do you perform?

Regression testing is re-testing of a previously tested program following modification to ensure that faults have
not been introduced or uncovered as a result of the changes made. Regression tests are designed for
repeatability, and are often used when testing a second or later version of the System Under Test (SUT).
Regression testing can be carried out on all applications, including e-Commerce and web-based systems. A
final regression test should be performed were the code coming out of QA is merged with a full copy of live
data. This final regression test should result in no new issues reported.