Differences between Verification and Validation

Prerequisite – Verification and Validation

Verification is the process of checking that a software achieves its goal without any bugs. It is
the process to ensure whether the product that is developed is right or not. It verifies whether the
developed product fulfills the requirements that we have. Verification is static testing.
Verification means Are we building the product right?

Validation is the process of checking whether the software product is up to the mark or in other
words product has high level requirements. It is the process of checking the validation of product
i.e. it checks what we are developing is the right product. it is validation of actual and expected
product. Validation is the dynamic testing.
Validation means Are we building the right product?

The difference between Verification and Validation is as follow:

Verification Validation
It includes checking documents, design, It includes testing and validating the actual
codes and programs. product.
Verification is the static testing. Validation is the dynamic testing.
It does not include the execution of the
It includes the execution of the code.
code.
Methods used in verification are reviews, Methods used in validation are Black Box
walkthroughs, inspections and desk- Testing, White Box Testing and non-
checking. functional testing.
It checks whether the software meets the
It checks whether the software conforms
requirements and expectations of a
to specifications or not.
customer or not.
It can find the bugs in the early stage of It can only find the bugs that could not be
the development. found by the verification process.
The goal of verification is application
and software architecture and The goal of validation is an actual product.
specification.
Validation is executed on software code
Quality assurance team does verification.
with the help of testing team.
It comes before validation. It comes after verification.
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Validation
It is imperative that data is entered correctly in a database. An automated database has the
benefit of including automatic checks in order to prevent incorrect data from being recorded into
the database. This is a process which isn’t available in a manual database.

Validation is a process whereby the data entered in the database is checked to make sure that it is
sensible. For example, validation can be utilized to check that only Male or Female is entered in
a sex field. It cannot check whether or not the data entered is correct. It can only check whether
or not the data makes sense.

Validation is a way of trying to lessen the number of errors during the process of data input.

Validation is carried out by the computer when you input data. It is a way of checking the input
data against the set of validation rules.

The purpose of validation is to make sure that data is a) logical, b) rational, and c) complete and
within acceptable limits.

Database Validation Methods

Type – If you make a specific field numeric then it won’t allow you to input any letters or other
non-numeric characters. Be wary when using the numeric data type. If you use it for fields like
phone numbers, it won’t allow you to enter spaces, or other human-friendly forms of formatting.

Some data types can carry out an extra type check. For example, a date data type will ensure that
a date inputted existed at some point, or could exist in the future. It would not accept the date
30/02/2018.

Presence – This is sometimes called Allow Blank or Mandatory. This type of validation
compels the user to enter data in the required field.

For example, in an address book, you can make either the address or phone number optional,
while you must make the name field required. Leaving a mandatory field blank will trigger an
error message that will prevent you from proceeding to the next step.

Unique Identifier – It is essential that one record can be plainly recognised from another record.
Generally speaking, each record has one field that functions as a unique identifier for a
record. An easy validation check can be done to make sure that a value occurs only once in this
field—it doesn’t matter if there are thousands of records in the database, the check can be carried
out just the same.

Range Check – Range check is a validation check which can be applied to numeric fields. This
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is done to ensure that only numbers within a certain domain can be entered into a
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field. Remember that this does not necessarily mean that the data entered will be correct. But it
will certainly lie within reasonable limits.

Format – This is used for a field that requires an entry in a specific format. Examples include
date format, postal codes, and driver’s license numbers.

Restricted Choice – There are times that fields in a database have a definite amount of data that
can be entered into them. For example, the amount of days in a week are limited to Sunday,
Monday, Tuesday, etc.

Programming a database to accept only one of a series of valid choices can prevent errors, and
can also serve to lessen the time it takes to input data.

This has different forms like a list box, combo box, or radio button.

Benefits of Restricted Choice:

 Faster data entry, because it is typically much quicker to select from a list than to type each
individual entry.
 Enhanced accuracy, because it lessens the risk of spelling mistakes.
 Limits the options to choose from by only displaying the essential choices.

Referential Integrity – If you’re using a relational database, then you can impose referential
integrity to validate inputs. You can check data inputs in certain fields against values in other
tables. For example, in the job database, when a new hire is entered, you could check the
supervisor name against the employee table, just like you could check the department name
against the department table.

Verification Validation
 The verifying process includes checking  It is a dynamic mechanism of testing
documents, design, code, and program and validating the actual product

 It does not involve executing the code  It always involves executing the code

 Verification uses methods like reviews,  It uses methods like Black Box Testing,
walkthroughs, inspections, and desk- White Box Testing, and non-functional
checking etc. testing

 It checks whether the software meets the

 Whether the software conforms to
requirements and expectations of a
specification is checked
customer
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  It can find bugs that the verification process
 It finds bugs early in the development cycle
can not catch

 Target is application and software

architecture, specification, complete  Target is an actual product
design, high level, and database design etc.

 QA team does verification and make sure

 With the involvement of testing team
that the software is as per the requirement
validation is executed on software code.
in the SRS document.

 It comes before validation  It comes after verification

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