Software testing

Remark that the slides are highly adapted from Ian Sommerville, Software Engineering, 9th ed.
 The testing process
• Component testing
– Testing of individual program components;
– Usually the responsibility of the component developer (except
sometimes for critical systems);
– Tests are derived from the developer’s experience.
• System testing
– Testing of groups of components integrated to create a system or sub-
system;
– The responsibility of an independent testing team;
– Tests are based on a system specification.
 Testing phases

Component System
testing testing

Software developer Independent testing team

 Testing process goals
• Validation testing
– To demonstrate to the developer and the system customer that the
software meets its requirements;
– A successful test shows that the system operates as intended.
• Defect testing
– To discover faults or defects in the software where its behaviour is
incorrect or not in conformance with its specification;
– A successful test is a test that makes the system perform incorrectly
and so exposes a defect in the system.
 The software testing process

Test Test Test Test

cases data results reports

Design test Prepare test Run program Compare results

cases data with test da
ta to test cases
 System testing
• Involves integrating components to create a
system or sub-system.
• May involve testing an increment to be
delivered to the customer.
• Two phases:
– Integration testing - the test team have access to
the system source code. The system is tested as
components are integrated.
– Release testing - the test team test the complete
system to be delivered as a black-box.
 Integration testing
• Involves building a system from its components and
testing it for problems that arise from component
interactions.
• Top-down integration
– Develop the skeleton of the system and populate it with
components.
• Bottom-up integration
– Integrate infrastructure components then add functional
components.
• To simplify error localisation, systems should be
incrementally integrated.
Incremental integration testing

A T1

T1
A
T1 T2
A B
T2

T2 B T3

T3
B C
T3 T4
C
T4

D T5

Test sequence 1 Test sequence 2 Test sequence 3

 Testing approaches
• Architectural validation
– Top-down integration testing is better at discovering errors in the
system architecture.
• System demonstration
– Top-down integration testing allows a limited demonstration at an
early stage in the development.
• Test implementation
– Often easier with bottom-up integration testing.
• Test observation
– Problems with both approaches. Extra code may be required to
observe tests.
 Black-box testing
Inputs causing
anomalous
Input test da
ta Ie behaviour

System

Outputs which reveal

the presence of
Output testesults
r Oe defects
 Testing guidelines
• Testing guidelines are hints for the testing team
to help them choose tests that will reveal
defects in the system
– Choose inputs that force the system to generate all
error messages;
– Design inputs that cause buffers to overflow;
– Repeat the same input or input series several times;
– Force invalid outputs to be generated;
– Force computation results to be too large or too
small.
 Testing scenario

A student in Scotland is studying American History and has been asked to write a paper
on ‘Frontier mentality in the American West from 1840 to 1880’. To do this, she needs to
find sources from a range of libraries. She logs on to the LIBSYS system and uses the
search facility to discover if she can access original documents from that time. She
discovers sources in various US university libraries and downloads copies of some of
these. However, for one document, she needs to have confirmation from her university
that she is a genuine student and that use is for non-commercial purposes. The student
then uses the facility in LIBSYS that can request such permission and registers her
request. If granted, the document will be downloaded to the registered library’s server
and printed for her. She receives a message from LIBSYS telling her that she will receive
an e-mail message when the printed document is available for collection.
System tests
 Use cases
• Use cases can be a basis for deriving the tests
for a system. They help identify operations to
be tested and help design the required test
cases.
• From an associated sequence diagram, the
inputs and outputs to be created for the tests
can be identified.
Collect weather data sequence chart

:CommsController :WeatherStation :WeatherData

request (repor
t)

acknowledge ()
report ()
summarise ()

send (repor
t)
reply (repor
t)

acknowledge ()
 Performance testing
• Part of release testing may involve testing the
emergent properties of a system, such as
performance and reliability.
• Performance tests usually involve planning a
series of tests where the load is steadily
increased until the system performance
becomes unacceptable.
 Stress testing
• Exercises the system beyond its maximum design load.
Stressing the system often causes defects to
come to light.
• Stressing the system test failure behaviour.. Systems should
not fail catastrophically. Stress testing checks for
unacceptable loss of service or data.
• Stress testing is particularly relevant to distributed systems
that can exhibit severe degradation as a
network becomes overloaded.
 Component testing
• Component or unit testing is the process of
testing individual components in isolation.
• It is a defect testing process.
• Components may be:
– Individual functions or methods within an object;
– Object classes with several attributes and
methods;
– Composite components with defined interfaces
used to access their functionality.
 Object class testing
• Complete test coverage of a class involves
– Testing all operations associated with an object;
– Setting and interrogating all object attributes;
– Exercising the object in all possible states.
• Inheritance makes it more difficult to design
object class tests as the information to be
tested is not localised.
Weather station object interface

WeatherStation
identifier
reportWeather ()
calibrate (instruments)
test ()
startup (instruments)
shutdown (instruments)
 Weather station testing
• Need to define test cases for reportWeather,
calibrate, test, startup and shutdown.
• Using a state model, identify sequences of
state transitions to be tested and the event
sequences to cause these transitions
• For example:
– Waiting -> Calibrating -> Testing -> Transmitting ->
Waiting
 Interface testing guidelines
• Design tests so that parameters to a called procedure are at
the extreme ends of their ranges.
• Always test pointer parameters with null pointers.
• Design tests which cause the component to fail.
• Use stress testing in message passing systems.
• In shared memory systems, vary the order in which
components are activated.
 Test case design
• Involves designing the test cases (inputs and
outputs) used to test the system.
• The goal of test case design is to create a set
of tests that are effective in validation and
defect testing.
• Design approaches:
– Requirements-based testing;
– Partition testing;
– Structural testing.
 Requirements based testing
• A general principle of requirements
engineering is that requirements should be
testable.
• Requirements-based testing is a validation
testing technique where you consider each
requirement and derive a set of tests for that
requirement.
LIBSYS requirements
 LIBSYS tests
 Initiate user search for searches for items that are known to
be present and known not to be present, where the set of
databases includes 1 database.
 Initiate user searches for items that are known to be present
and known not to be present, where the set of databases
includes 2 databases
 Initiate user searches for items that are known to be present
and known not to be present where the set of databases
includes more than 2 databases.
 Select one database from the set of databases and initiate
user searches for items that are known to be present and
known not to be present.
 Select more than one database from the set of databases
and initiate searches for items that are known to be present
and known not to be present.