Chapter 8 – Software Testing

Lecture 1

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Topics covered

 Development testing
 Test-driven development
 Release testing
 User testing

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Program testing

 Testing is intended to show that a program does what it is

intended to do and to discover program defects before it is put
into use.
 When you test software, you execute a program using
artificial data.
 You check the results of the test run for errors, anomalies or
information about the program’s non-functional attributes.
 Can reveal the presence of errors NOT their
absence.
 Testing is part of a more general verification and validation
process, which also includes static validation techniques.

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Program testing goals

 To demonstrate to the developer and the customer that

the software meets its requirements.
 For custom software, this means that there should be at least
one test for every requirement in the requirements document.
For generic software products, it means that there should be
tests for all of the system features, plus combinations of these
features, that will be incorporated in the product release.
 To discover situations in which the behavior of the
software is incorrect, undesirable or does not conform to
its specification.
 Defect testing is concerned with rooting out undesirable system
behavior such as system crashes, unwanted interactions with
other systems, incorrect computations and data corruption.
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Validation and defect testing

 The first goal leads to validation testing

 You expect the system to perform correctly using a given set of
test cases that reflect the system’s expected use.
 The second goal leads to defect testing
 The test cases are designed to expose defects. The test cases
in defect testing can be deliberately obscure and need not reflect
how the system is normally used.

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Testing process goals

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An input-output model of program testing

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Verification vs validation

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V & V confidence

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Inspections and testing

 Software inspections Concerned with analysis of

the static system representation to discover problems
(static verification)
 May be supplement by tool-based document and code
analysis.
 Discussed in Chapter 15.
 Software testing Concerned with exercising and
observing product behaviour (dynamic verification)
 The system is executed with test data and its operational
behaviour is observed.

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Inspections and testing

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Software inspections

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Advantages of inspections

 During testing, errors can mask (hide) other errors.

Because inspection is a static process, you don’t have to
be concerned with interactions between errors.
 Incomplete versions of a system can be inspected
without additional costs. If a program is incomplete, then
you need to develop specialized test harnesses to test
the parts that are available.
 As well as searching for program defects, an inspection
can also consider broader quality attributes of a
program, such as compliance with standards, portability
and maintainability.

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Inspections and testing

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A model of the software testing process

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Stages of testing

 Development testing, where the system is tested during

development to discover bugs and defects.
 Release testing, where a separate testing team test a
complete version of the system before it is released to
users.
 User testing, where users or potential users of a system
test the system in their own environment.

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Development testing

 Development testing includes all testing activities that

are carried out by the team developing the system.
 Unit testing, where individual program units or object classes are
tested. Unit testing should focus on testing the functionality of
objects or methods.
 Component testing, where several individual units are integrated
to create composite components. Component testing should
focus on testing component interfaces.
 System testing, where some or all of the components in a
system are integrated and the system is tested as a whole.
System testing should focus on testing component interactions.

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Unit testing

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Object class testing

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Automated testing

 Whenever possible, unit testing should be automated so

that tests are run and checked without manual
intervention.
 In automated unit testing, you make use of a test
automation framework (such as JUnit) to write and run
your program tests.
 Unit testing frameworks provide generic test classes that
you extend to create specific test cases. They can then
run all of the tests that you have implemented and
report, often through some GUI, on the success of
otherwise of the tests.

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Automated test components

 A setup part, where you initialize the system with the test
case, namely the inputs and expected outputs.
 A call part, where you call the object or method to be
tested.
 An assertion part where you compare the result of the
call with the expected result. If the assertion evaluates to
true, the test has been successful if false, then it has
failed.

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Unit test effectiveness

 The test cases should show that, when used as

expected, the component that you are testing does what
it is supposed to do.
 If there are defects in the component, these should be
revealed by test cases.
 This leads to 2 types of unit test case:
 The first of these should reflect normal operation of a program
and should show that the component works as expected.
 The other kind of test case should be based on testing
experience of where common problems arise. It should use
abnormal inputs to check that these are properly processed and
do not crash the component.
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Testing strategies

 Partition testing, where you identify groups of inputs that

have common characteristics and should be processed
in the same way.
 You should choose tests from within each of these groups.
 Guideline-based testing, where you use testing
guidelines to choose test cases.
 These guidelines reflect previous experience of the kinds of
errors that programmers often make when developing
components.

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Partition testing

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Key points

 Testing can only show the presence of errors in a

program. It cannot demonstrate that there are no
remaining faults.
 Development testing is the responsibility of the software
development team. A separate team should be
responsible for testing a system before it is released to
customers.
 Development testing includes unit testing, in which you
test individual objects and methods component testing
in which you test related groups of objects and system
testing, in which you test partial or complete systems.

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Chapter 8 – Software Testing

Lecture 2

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Component testing

 Software components are often composite components

that are made up of several interacting objects.
 For example, in the weather station system, the reconfiguration
component includes objects that deal with each aspect of the
reconfiguration.
 You access the functionality of these objects through the
defined component interface.
 Testing composite components should therefore focus
on showing that the component interface behaves
according to its specification.
 You can assume that unit tests on the individual objects within
the component have been completed.
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System testing

 System testing during development involves integrating

components to create a version of the system and then
testing the integrated system.
 The focus in system testing is testing the interactions
between components.
 System testing checks that components are compatible,
interact correctly and transfer the right data at the right
time across their interfaces.
 System testing tests the emergent behaviour of a
system.

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System and component testing

 During system testing, reusable components that have

been separately developed and off-the-shelf systems
may be integrated with newly developed components.
The complete system is then tested.
 Components developed by different team members or
sub-teams may be integrated at this stage. System
testing is a collective rather than an individual process.
 In some companies, system testing may involve a separate
testing team with no involvement from designers and
programmers.

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Test-driven development

 Test-driven development (TDD) is an approach to

program development in which you inter-leave testing
and code development.
 Tests are written before code and ‘passing’ the tests is
the critical driver of development.
 You develop code incrementally, along with a test for that
increment. You don’t move on to the next increment until
the code that you have developed passes its test.
 TDD was introduced as part of agile methods such as
Extreme Programming. However, it can also be used in
plan-driven development processes.
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Test-driven development

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TDD process activities

 Start by identifying the increment of functionality that is

required. This should normally be small and
implementable in a few lines of code.
 Write a test for this functionality and implement this as an
automated test.
 Run the test, along with all other tests that have been
implemented. Initially, you have not implemented the
functionality so the new test will fail.
 Implement the functionality and re-run the test.
 Once all tests run successfully, you move on to
implementing the next chunk of functionality.
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Benefits of test-driven development

 Code coverage
 Every code segment that you write has at least one associated
test so all code written has at least one test.
 Regression testing
 A regression test suite is developed incrementally as a program
is developed.
 Simplified debugging
 When a test fails, it should be obvious where the problem lies.
The newly written code needs to be checked and modified.
 System documentation
 The tests themselves are a form of documentation that describe
what the code should be doing.
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Key points

 When testing software, you should try to ‘break’ the software by

using experience and guidelines to choose types of test case that
have been effective in discovering defects in other systems.
 Wherever possible, you should write automated tests. The tests are
embedded in a program that can be run every time a change is
made to a system.
 Test-first development is an approach to development where tests
are written before the code to be tested.
 Scenario testing involves inventing a typical usage scenario and
using this to derive test cases.
 Acceptance testing is a user testing process where the aim is to
decide if the software is good enough to be deployed and used in its
operational environment.
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