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Acceptance Testing:
Testing conducted to enable a user/customer to
determine whether to accept a software product. Normally performed to
validate the software meets a set of agreed acceptance criteria.
Accessibility Testing:
Verifying a product is accessible to the people having disabilities
(deaf, blind, mentally disabled etc.).
Ad Hoc Testing:
A testing phase where the tester tries to 'break' the system by randomly
trying the system's functionality. Can include negative testing as well.
See also http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#monkeytesting - Monkey Testing .
Agile Testing:
Testing practice for projects using agile methodologies, treating development
as the customer of testing and emphasizing a test-first design paradigm. See
also http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#tdd - Test Driven Development .
Application Binary Interface (ABI):
A specification defining requirements for portability of applications
in binary forms across defferent system platforms and environments.
Application Programming Interface (API):
A formalized set of software calls and routines that can be referenced
by an application program in order to access supporting system or
network services.
Automated Software Quality (ASQ):
The use of software tools, such as automated testing tools, to improve
software quality.
Automated Testing:
-
Testing employing software tools which execute tests without manual
intervention. Can be applied in GUI, performance, API, etc. testing.
- The use of software to control the execution of tests, the
comparison of actual outcomes to predicted outcomes, the setting up of
test preconditions, and other test control and test reporting
functions.
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Backus-Naur Form:
A metalanguage used to formally describe the syntax of a language.
Basic Block:
A sequence of one or more consecutive, executable statements containing no
branches.
Basis Path Testing:
A white box test case design technique that uses the algorithmic flow of the program to design tests.
Basis Set:
The set of tests derived using http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#basispathtesting - basis path testing .
Baseline:
The point at which some deliverable produced during the software engineering process is put under formal change control.
Benchmark Testing:Tests
that use representative sets of programs and data designed to evaluate
the performance of computer hardware and software in a given
configuration.
Beta Testing:
Testing of a rerelease of a software product conducted by customers.
Binary Portability Testing:
Testing an executable application for portability across system platforms
and environments, usually for conformation to an http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#abi - ABI
specification.
Black Box Testing:
Testing based on an analysis of the specification of a piece of software
without reference to its internal workings. The goal is to test how well
the component conforms to the published requirements for the component.
Bottom Up Testing:An
approach to integration testing where the lowest level components are
tested first, then used to facilitate the testing of higher level
components. The process is repeated until the component at the top of
the hierarchy is tested.
Boundary Testing:
Test which focus on the boundary or limit conditions of the software being tested. (Some of these tests are stress tests).
Boundary Value Analysis:
In boundary value analysis, test cases are generated using the extremes
of the input domaini, e.g. maximum, minimum, just inside/outside boundaries, typical values, and error values.
BVA is similar to Equivalence Partitioning but focuses on "corner cases".
Branch Testing:
Testing in which all branches in the program source code are tested at least once.
Breadth Testing:
A test suite that exercises the full functionality of a product but does
not test features in detail.
Bug:
A fault in a program which causes the program to perform in an unintended or unanticipated manner.
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CAST:
Computer Aided Software Testing.
Capture/Replay Tool:
A test tool that records test input as
it is sent to the software under test. The input cases stored can then
be used to reproduce the test at a later time. Most commonly applied to
GUI test tools.
CMM:
The Capability Maturity Model for Software (CMM or SW-CMM) is a
model for judging the maturity of the software processes of an
organization and for identifying the key practices that are required
to increase the maturity of these processes.
Cause Effect Graph:
A graphical representation of inputs and the associated outputs effects which can be used to design test cases.
Code Complete:
Phase of development where functionality is implemented in entirety; bug fixes
are all that are left. All functions found in the Functional Specifications
have been implemented.
Code Coverage:
An analysis method that determines which parts of the software have
been executed (covered) by the test case suite and which parts have
not been executed and therefore may require additional attention.
Code Inspection:
A formal testing technique where the programmer reviews source code with
a group who ask questions analyzing the program logic, analyzing the code
with respect to a checklist of historically common programming errors, and
analyzing its compliance with coding standards.
Code Walkthrough:
A formal testing technique where source code is traced by a group
with a small set of test cases, while the state of program variables
is manually monitored, to analyze the programmer's logic and assumptions.
Coding:
The generation of source code.
Compatibility Testing:
Testing whether software is compatible with other
elements of a system with which it should operate, e.g. browsers,
Operating Systems, or hardware.
Component:
A minimal software item for which a separate specification is available.
Component Testing:
See http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#unittesting - Unit Testing .
Concurrency Testing:Multi-user
testing geared towards determining the effects of accessing the same
application code, module or database records. Identifies and measures
the level of locking, deadlocking and use of single-threaded code and
locking semaphores.
Conformance Testing:
The process of testing that an implementation conforms to the specification
on which it is based. Usually applied to testing conformance to a formal
standard.
Context Driven Testing:
The context-driven school of software testing is flavor of http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#agiletesting - Agile Testing
that advocates continuous and creative evaluation of testing
opportunities in light of the potential information revealed and the
value of that information to the organization right now.
Conversion Testing:
Testing of programs or procedures used to convert data from existing systems for use in replacement systems.
Cyclomatic Complexity:
A measure of the logical complexity of an algorithm, used in white-box testing.
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Data Dictionary:
A database that contains definitions of all data items defined during analysis.
Data Flow Diagram:
A modeling notation that represents a functional decomposition of a system.
Data Driven Testing:
Testing in which the action of a test case is parameterized by externally
defined data values, maintained as a file or spreadsheet. A common technique
in http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#automatedtesting - Automated Testing .
Debugging:
The process of finding and removing the causes of software failures.
Defect:
Nonconformance to requirements or functional / program specification
Dependency Testing:
Examines an application's requirements for pre-existing software, initial
states and configuration in order to maintain proper functionality.
Depth Testing:
A test that exercises a feature of a product in full detail.
Dynamic Testing:
Testing software through executing it. See also http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#statictesting -
Static Testing .
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Emulator:
A device, computer program, or system that accepts the same inputs and produces the same outputs as a given system.
Endurance Testing:
Checks for memory leaks or other problems that may occur with prolonged
execution.
End-to-End testing:
Testing a complete application environment in a situation that mimics
real-world use, such as interacting with a database, using network
communications, or interacting with other hardware, applications, or
systems if appropriate.
Equivalence Class:
A portion of a component's input or output domains for which the component's
behaviour is assumed to be the same from the component's specification.
Equivalence Partitioning:
A test case design technique for a component in which test cases are designed
to execute representatives from equivalence classes.
Exhaustive Testing:
Testing which covers all combinations of input values and preconditions for
an element of the software under test.
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Functional Decomposition:
A technique used during planning, analysis and design; creates a functional hierarchy for the software.
Functional Specification:
A document that describes in detail the characteristics of the product with
regard to its intended features.
Functional Testing:
See also http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#blackbox - Black Box Testing .
-
Testing the features and operational behavior of a product to ensure they
correspond to its specifications.
- Testing that ignores the internal mechanism of a system or
component and focuses solely on the outputs generated in response to
selected inputs and execution conditions.
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Glass Box Testing:
A synonym for http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#whitebox - White Box Testing .
Gorilla Testing:
Testing one particular module,functionality heavily.
Gray Box Testing:
A combination of http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#blackbox - Black Box and http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#whitebox -
White Box testing methodologies: testing a piece of software against
its specification but using some knowledge of its internal workings.
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High Order Tests:
Black-box tests conducted once the software has been integrated.
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Independent Test Group (ITG):
A group of people whose primary responsibility is software testing,
Inspection:A
group review quality improvement process for written material. It
consists of two aspects; product (document itself) improvement and
process improvement (of both document production and inspection).
Integration Testing:
Testing of combined parts of an application to determine if they function
together correctly. Usually performed after unit and functional testing.
This type of testing is especially relevant to client/server and distributed systems.
Installation Testing:Confirms
that the application under test recovers from expected or unexpected
events without loss of data or functionality. Events can include
shortage of disk space, unexpected loss of communication, or power out
conditions.
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Load Testing:
See http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#performancetesting - Performance Testing .
Localization Testing:
This term refers to making software specifically designed for a specific locality.
Loop Testing:
A white box testing technique that exercises program loops.
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Metric:A
standard of measurement. Software metrics are the statistics describing
the structure or content of a program. A metric should be a real
objective measurement of something such as number of bugs per lines of
code.
Monkey Testing:
Testing a system or an Application on the fly, i.e just few tests
here and there to ensure the system or an application does not crash out.
Mutation Testing:
Testing done on the application where bugs are purposely added to it.
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Negative Testing:
Testing aimed at showing software does not work. Also known as "test to fail".
See also http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#positivetesting - Positive Testing .
N+1 Testing:A
variation of Regression Testing. Testing conducted with multiple cycles
in which errors found in test cycle N are resolved and the solution is
retested in test cycle N+1. The cycles are typically repeated until the
solution reaches a steady state and there are no errors.
See also http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#regressiontesting - Regression Testing .
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Path Testing:
Testing in which all paths in the program source code are tested at least once.
Performance Testing:
Testing conducted to evaluate the compliance of a system or component with
specified performance requirements. Often this is performed using an
automated test tool to simulate large number of users. Also know as "Load
Testing".
Positive Testing:
Testing aimed at showing software works. Also known as "test to pass".
See also http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#negativetesting - Negative Testing .
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Quality Assurance:
All those planned or systematic actions necessary to provide adequate
confidence that a product or service is of the type and quality needed
and expected by the customer.
Quality Audit:A
systematic and independent examination to determine whether quality
activities and related results comply with planned arrangements and
whether these arrangements are implemented effectively and are suitable
to achieve objectives.
Quality Circle:A
group of individuals with related interests that meet at regular
intervals to consider problems or other matters related to the quality
of outputs of a process and to the correction of problems or to the
improvement of quality.
Quality Control:
The operational techniques and the activities used to fulfill and verify requirements of quality.
Quality Management:
That aspect of the overall management function that determines and implements the quality policy.
Quality Policy:
The overall intentions and direction of an organization as regards quality as formally expressed by top management.
Quality System:
The organizational structure, responsibilities, procedures, processes, and resources for implementing quality management.
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Race Condition:
A cause of concurrency problems. Multiple accesses to a shared resource,
at least one of which is a write, with no mechanism used by either to
moderate simultaneous access.
Ramp Testing:
Continuously raising an input signal until the system breaks down.
Recovery Testing:Confirms
that the program recovers from expected or unexpected events without
loss of data or functionality. Events can include shortage of disk
space, unexpected loss of communication, or power out conditions.
Regression Testing:
Retesting a previously tested program following modification to ensure
that faults have not been introduced or uncovered as a result of the
changes made.
Release Candidate:A
pre-release version, which contains the desired functionality of the
final version, but which needs to be tested for bugs (which ideally
should be removed before the final version is released).
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Sanity Testing:
Brief test of major functional elements of a piece of software to determine if
its basically operational.
See also http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#smoketest - Smoke Testing .
Scalability Testing:
Performance testing focused on ensuring the application under test gracefully
handles increases in work load.
Security Testing:Testing
which confirms that the program can restrict access to authorized
personnel and that the authorized personnel can access the functions
available to their security level.
Smoke Testing:
A quick-and-dirty test that the major functions of a piece of software work.
Originated in the hardware testing practice of turning on a new piece of
hardware for the first time and considering it a success if it does not
catch on fire.
Soak Testing:Running
a system at high load for a prolonged period of time. For example,
running several times more transactions in an entire day (or night)
than would be expected in a busy day, to identify and performance
problems that appear after a large number of transactions have been
executed.
Software Requirements Specification:A
deliverable that describes all data, functional and behavioral
requirements, all constraints, and all validation requirements for
software/
Software Testing:
A set of activities conducted with the intent of finding errors in software.
Static Analysis:
Analysis of a program carried out without executing the program.
Static Analyzer:
A tool that carries out static analysis.
Static Testing:
Analysis of a program carried out without executing the program.
Storage Testing:Testing
that verifies the program under test stores data files in the correct
directories and that it reserves sufficient space to prevent unexpected
termination resulting from lack of space. This is external storage as
opposed to internal storage.
Stress Testing:
Testing conducted to evaluate a system or component at or beyond the limits of
its specified requirements to determine the load under which it fails and how. Often this is http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#performancetesting - performance testing using a very high level of simulated load.
Structural Testing:
Testing based on an analysis of internal workings and structure of a piece of software.
See also http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#whitebox - White Box Testing .
System Testing:
Testing that attempts to discover defects that are properties of the entire system rather than of its individual components.
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Testability:The
degree to which a system or component facilitates the establishment of
test criteria and the performance of tests to determine whether those
criteria have been met.
Testing:
-
The process of exercising software to verify that it satisfies
specified requirements and to detect errors.
-
The process of analyzing a
software item to detect the differences between existing and required
conditions (that is, bugs), and to evaluate the features of the software
item (Ref. IEEE Std 829).
- The process of operating a system or component under specified
conditions, observing or recording the results, and making an
evaluation of some aspect of the system or component.
Test Automation:
See http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#automatedtesting - Automated Testing .
Test Bed:
An execution environment configured for testing. May consist of specific
hardware, OS, network topology, configuration of the product under test,
other application or system software, etc. The Test Plan for a project
should enumerated the test beds(s) to be used.
Test Case:
-
Test Case is a commonly used term for a specific test. This is usually
the smallest unit of testing. A Test Case will consist of information such
as requirements testing, test steps, verification steps, prerequisites,
outputs, test environment, etc.
- A set of inputs, execution preconditions, and expected outcomes
developed for a particular objective, such as to exercise a particular
program path or to verify compliance with a specific requirement.
Test Driven Development:Testing
methodology associated with Agile Programming in which every chunk of
code is covered by unit tests, which must all pass all the time, in an
effort to eliminate unit-level and regression bugs during development.
Practitioners of TDD write a lot of tests, i.e. an equal number of
lines
of test code to the size of the production code.
Test Driver:
A program or test tool used to execute a tests. Also known as a Test Harness.
Test Environment:The
hardware and software environment in which tests will be run, and any
other software with which the software under test interacts when under
test including stubs and test drivers.
Test First Design:Test-first
design is one of the mandatory practices of Extreme Programming (XP).It
requires that programmers do not write any production code until they
have first written a unit test.
Test Harness:
A program or test tool used to execute a tests. Also known as a Test Driver.
Test Plan:
A document describing the scope, approach, resources, and schedule of intended
testing activities. It identifies test items, the features to be tested, the
testing tasks, who will do each task, and any risks requiring contingency
planning. Ref IEEE Std 829.
Test Procedure:
A document providing detailed instructions for the execution of one or more http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#testcase - test cases .
Test Scenario:
Definition of a set of http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#testcase - test cases or http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#testscript - test scripts and the sequence in which they are to be executed.
Test Script:
Commonly used to refer to the instructions for a particular test that
will be carried out by an automated test tool.
Test Specification:
A document specifying the test approach for a software feature or
combination or features and the inputs, predicted results and execution
conditions for the associated tests.
Test Suite:
A collection of tests used to validate the behavior of a product. The scope
of a Test Suite varies from organization to organization. There may be several
Test Suites for a particular product for example. In most cases however a Test
Suite is a high level concept, grouping together hundreds or thousands of
tests related by what they are intended to test.
Test Tools:
Computer programs used in the testing of a system, a component of the system, or its documentation.
Thread Testing:
A variation of http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#topdowntesting - top-down testing
where the progressive integration of components follows the
implementation of subsets of the requirements, as opposed to the
integration of components by successively lower levels.
Top Down Testing:An
approach to integration testing where the component at the top of the
component hierarchy is tested first, with lower level components being
simulated by stubs. Tested components are then used to test lower level
components. The process is repeated until the lowest level components
have been tested.
Total Quality Management:
A company commitment to develop a process that achieves high quality product and customer satisfaction.
Traceability Matrix:
A document showing the relationship between Test Requirements and Test Cases.
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Usability Testing:
Testing the ease with which users can learn and use a product.
Use Case:The
specification of tests that are conducted from the end-user
perspective. Use cases tend to focus on operating software as an
end-user would conduct their day-to-day activities.
User Acceptance Testing:
A formal product evaluation performed by a customer as a condition of purchase.
Unit Testing:
Testing of individual software components.
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Validation:The
process of evaluating software at the end of the software development
process to ensure compliance with software requirements. The techniques
for validation is testing, inspection and reviewing.
Verification:The
process of determining whether of not the products of a given phase of
the software development cycle meet the implementation steps and can be
traced to the incoming objectives established during the previous
phase. The techniques for verification are testing, inspection and
reviewing.
Volume Testing:Testing
which confirms that any values that may become large over time (such as
accumulated counts, logs, and data files), can be accommodated by the
program and will not cause the program to stop working or degrade its
operation in any manner.
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Walkthrough:
A review of requirements, designs or code characterized by the author
of the material under review guiding the progression of the review.
White Box Testing:
Testing based on an analysis of internal workings and structure of a piece of software. Includes techniques such as http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#branchtesting - Branch Testing and http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#pathtesting - Path Testing . Also known as http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#structuraltesting - Structural Testing and http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#glassbox - Glass Box Testing .
Contrast with http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html#blackbox - Black Box Testing .
Workflow Testing:
Scripted end-to-end testing which duplicates specific workflows which are
expected to be utilized by the end-user.
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