Web Software Testing: Guarantee that the Web Software is purposeful and safe
The software development life cycle contains numerous stages. Software performance testing is an important stage within the software development cycle (SDCL). A variety of testing methods are used beginning with the application’s development until it gets the marketing stage. These methods are employed during various stages of the SDLC. Moreover there are different varieties of the software that needs to be tested before it is released to the costumer.
One variety is software for web applications. With the advent of the Internet web software has significantly increased in importance, as the Internet has had a substantial impact on our daily lives. Because of the high impact Internet has on our daily lives any web software is carefully tested before launching in order to reduce the associated security risks that originate from the use of the Internet.
Even though the testing of web software is vital, there is at all times rush in building and testing those application due to time constraints. In the design and development stages, testing engineers utilize different groups or types of tests such as code testing, load testing, compatibility testing, functional testing and regression testing.
The web software is usually released using a pattern of software release known as alpha/beta testing.Alpha testing is a replicated or real ready testing by would-be users/customers or a separate testing team on the developers’ location. Because during alpha testing the software is actually still being developed only small modules of the software are tested during this stage. When of-the-self software is employed, alpha testing is often used as an internal acceptance test. Software that has been alpha tested cannot be released until all the major functional parts have been coded and tested.
Beta testing is done by a limited amount of users that can use the software before its official release takes place. Since the web site design uses HTML coding, it’s easy to integrate individual web pages on site; hence the alpha/beta method is usually not used for website development This means they can build and test one page at a time. After completion they can move onto the next one, with each page independent of each other.
In code testing the software testing or development engineer examines the codes for software bugs. Because the time involved in web development is small it is important that the software is free of bugs. Paired-programming is one of the favourite methods that highly qualified testers can use to produce bug free coding.
Two coders working at a single workstation it is at the core of paired programming. The driver types in the code while the observer or navigator reviews each line. The judgment behind taking up this method is the following. The Economist proclaims that, “Laurie Williams of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City has shown that paired programmers are only 15% slower than two independent individual programmers, but produce 15% fewer bugs.”
As the development process continues the software is tested repeatedly. By the time it’s finally released the software is free of bugs. Load testing is done to see at what point the application fails or the performance reduces when under heavy loads such as multiple users on or heavy server traffic. The testing documents the number of users the site will support simultaneously, the number of transactions it can handle and its response time under various conditions or traffic flows.
Compatibility testing needs to be carried out to asses the software compatibility with the software and hardware that it may interact with. This includes testing compatibility with operating systems, database, browsers, peripherals and backwards compatibility.
Functional testing confirms its specifications and accurately performs all of the required tasks. This involves doing a series of tests that perform a feature by feature validation of behavior, utilizing a wide range of normal and erroneous input data. Regression testing is carried out to check that any changes made to the code in order to enhance it or to fix defects has not affected any functionality.
Regression testing is very important whenever there’s iterative development of software. In this type of development, the developer adds another module with some functionality to the existing module that’s running. One should make sure that adding this module does not ruin the existing functionality. Regression testing is done to find out any of such instances. The above mentioned methods are essential tests to complete the web software testing.
