Different Types of Software Testing

What Is Software Testing?

Software testing is the process of ensuring that software applications are functional, reliable, and of high quality. This process involves finding errors and vulnerabilities to ensure the software application meets the user’s expectations before going live.

Testers perform software testing through manual or automation techniques to ensure the software application functions as intended. This involves careful planning, test case creation, running of test script, and debugging, etc. Following tests, testers communicate results to the development team for further modifications, aiming to deliver a high-quality software application to the users.

It is an essential part of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and provides necessary mitigation against possibly business-impacting bugs that would otherwise go undetected.

Other Types of Software Testing

In this section, we will discuss some other types of software testing. However, there are more. To explore different types of software testing in detail, we recommend you check this software testing glossary.

• Agile testing: Agile testing is one of the types of software testing that adheres to the best practices of the Agile development framework. Agile development adopts an incremental approach to development, and similarly, Agile testing involves an incremental approach to testing. In this Agile test, the features of software applications are tested as they are developed.
• Parallel testing: It is a software technique or process that leverages automation testing capabilities to execute the same tests simultaneously in multiple environments, real devices, and browser configurations. This approach significantly reduces testing time and effort.
• Geolocation testing: Geolocation testing simulates different geographical locations to test how software applications respond based on a user’s perceived location.
• Real device testing: This type of software testing involves running tests on physical devices (smartphones, tablets) rather than emulators or simulators. It can be performed on both local and cloud-based infrastructure.
• Localhost testing: It is a technique to test software applications hosted on your machine (localhost) before deploying it to a production environment.
• Localization testing: Localization testing ensures the correct functioning of the application in the local environment, including accurate text translation, appropriate use of symbols and characters, and compliance with local regulations and standards.
• Dynamic testing: Dynamic testing involves the analysis of code’s dynamic behavior within the software application. In this testing method, input is provided, and the expected output is determined by executing a test case. Test cases can be run manually or through an automation process, requiring the compilation and execution of the software code.
• Data-driven testing: This software testing methodology utilizes a table of conditions directly as test inputs and verifiable outputs. The test environment settings and control are not hardcoded in this approach.
• Keyword-driven testing: Keyword-driven framework is a testing method that involves defining test cases using keywords. Testers use predefined keywords to create test scripts that an automated testing tool executes.
• Retesting: It involves repeating a test on a specific feature that was non-functional in the previous test to verify its functionality. Typically, the same testers who identified the defect in the first place perform retesting.
• Static testing : It is performed on a software application without executing the actual code. It involves reviewing and validating the software and its supporting documents. In contrast, dynamic testing is carried out on software during code execution.
• Negative testing: This type of software testing, also known as “test to fail,” aims to show that a component or software application does not work.
• Operational testing: It refers to the evaluation of a software application before the production phase. It ensures system and component compliance in the application’s standard operating environment.
• API testing: API testing is a type of software testing that involves directly testing application programming interfaces (APIs), both independently and as part of integration testing. This test is helpful to know whether they fulfill expectations for functionality, reliability, performance, and security. As APIs lack a GUI, API testing is performed at the message layer.
• Mutation testing: It is a method of software testing that involves modifying the software application’s source code or bytecode in small ways to test sections of the code that are seldom or never accessed during normal test execution.
• Pair testing: In this testing, two team members work together on one machine to test the software application, with one performing the testing and the other analyzing or reviewing the testing.
• Active testing: Active testing is a technique where the user inputs test data and analyzes the results. Throughout active testing, a tester builds a mental model of the software under test, which continues to evolve and refine as interactions with the software progress.
• Benchmark testing: Benchmark testing is a testing method that involves evaluating the performance of the software application against established benchmarks or industry standards. It is a collaborative effort involving both application developers and database administrators (DBAs). Benchmark testing is carried out on a software application to evaluate its current performance and can be used to enhance application performance.
• Code-driven testing: Code-driven testing, also known as Test-Driven Development, begins by adding a test sufficient to make the code fail. Subsequently, a complete test suite or a subset of tests is executed to expedite testing and ensure the new test fails. The code is then modified to make it pass the new tests. Following this, the tests are executed again. If they fail, the code needs to be updated and retested. Once the test passes, the process is repeated for the next development item.
• Context-driven testing: Context-driven testing is a form of software testing developed before market launch to evaluate the software application on all parameters, including performance, UI, speed, functionalities, and other aspects, to identify and address bugs. However, many organizations may be unaware of its importance and how to perform context-driven testing effectively.
• Path testing: This involves testing all possible paths through the code to ensure the execution of each path and the achievement of expected outcomes.
• Age testing: This type of testing evaluates the software application’s ability to perform in the future. The evaluation process is executed by testing teams. This indicates that age testing tells us how the software application will behave in the future after it gets older or is used for a certain number of years.
• Assertion testing: This type of software testing involves checking specific statements or boolean expressions known as assertions, which are incorporated into the code to evaluate whether the expected conditions or outcomes hold true during program execution. These assertions help identify and identify errors or bugs in the software.
• Pairwise testing: It is alternatively known as all-pairs testing, permutations, and combinations (P&C) based type of software testing. This involves the evaluation of each pair of input parameters to ensure the proper functioning of the software application for all possible discrete combinations.
• Binary portability testing: This tests a running application for portability across software platforms and environments, usually for confirmation of an ABI specification. Testing teams are tasked with its implementation.
• Boundary value testing: In this type of software testing, tests are designed to include representatives of boundary values. In other words, it involves evaluating data by considering its boundary values, specifically its two opposite ends, such as minimums and maximums. QA testing teams typically perform this type of testing.
• Breadth testing: In this type of software testing, the full functionality of a software application is tested, but not all features are tested in detail.
• Comparison testing: This software testing type compares the strengths and weaknesses of the software application with previous versions or similar applications. It can be performed by testers, developers, product managers, or product owners.
• Condition coverage testing: This type of software testing where each condition (Boolean conditions) is executed by making it true and false in each way at least once.
• Compliance testing: This is a type of testing that checks whether the software application was developed in accordance with standards, procedures, and guidelines. It is usually performed by external companies that offer a “Certified OGC Compliant” brand.
• Concurrency testing: This type of multi-user testing aims to identify and address issues that may arise when multiple users or processes access a software application code, module, or database records. Simultaneously. It ensures the system can manage concurrent requests without crashing or causing data corruption.
• Conformance testing: This process validates that software applications work according to specified standards. For example, compilers undergo extensive testing to verify whether they meet the recognized standard for that language.
• Conversion testing: This involves testing the software application or procedures utilized to convert data from existing systems for utilization in replacement systems.
• Destructive testing: It is a method of software testing aimed at discovering points of failure within a software application. This approach intentionally induces application failure to evaluate robustness and pinpoint failure points.
• Dependency testing: This testing type evaluates the software application’s requirements for pre-existing software, initial states, and configuration to ensure proper functionality is maintained within the software application.
• Domain testing: It is a software testing technique where a minimal number of inputs are used to obtain the appropriate output of a system, ensuring the system rejects invalid input values.
• Error-handling testing: It is a type of software testing that evaluates the software application’s capability to process erroneous transactions accurately.
• Equivalence partitioning testing: It is a type of software testing that categorizes the input data of a software unit into partitions from which test cases can be derived. An ideal test case identifies classes of errors, requiring execution of multiple arbitrary test cases before general errors are observed.
• Fault injection testing: It is a component of a comprehensive test strategy that allows the tester to focus on how the application under test manages exceptions.
• Formal verification testing: This involves proving or disproving the correctness of intended algorithms underlying a system with respect to a specific formal specification or property using formal mathematical methods.
• Globalization testing: It is a testing method that verifies the proper functionality of the software application with any culture/locale settings using various international inputs.
• Hybrid integration testing: It is a testing technique combining top-down and bottom-up integration methods to leverage both benefits.
• Install/uninstall testing: It focuses on the actions customers must take to install and set up the new software successfully. This may include full, partial, or upgrade install/uninstall processes and is usually carried out by the QA engineer in collaboration with the configuration manager.
• Internationalization testing: This ensures that the functionality of the software application is not disrupted and all messages are correctly externalized when used in different languages and locales.
• Inter-software application testing: It is a testing technique that focuses on testing the application to ensure that the interconnection between applications functions correctly.
• Loop testing: Loop testing is a type of software testing performed to validate loops within a software application. It falls under the category of control structure testing.
• Manual scripted testing: This is a method in which the test cases are designed and reviewed by the team before execution.
• Model-based testing: This testing type involves the software application of model-based design for designing and executing the necessary artifacts to perform software testing.
• Modularity-driven testing: This is a software testing technique that requires the creation of small, independent scripts representing modules, sections, and functions of the application under test.
• Orthogonal array testing (OAT): It is a software testing technique that uses orthogonal arrays to create test cases, especially useful when the software application has extensive data inputs.
• Passive testing: This type of hands-off software testing involves running a test script and monitoring the results, requiring no manual interaction from the tester.
• Qualification testing: This testing is performed against the specifications of the previous release, usually done by the developer for the user to demonstrate that the software meets its specified requirements.
• Ramp testing: This type of software testing consists of continuously raising an input signal until the software application breaks down.
• Requirements testing: This is an approach where test cases, conditions, and data are derived from requirements to ensure that project requirements are fully explained and do not conflict.
• Scenario testing: It is a testing activity that uses scenarios based on a hypothetical story to help a person think through a complex problem or software application for a testing environment.
• Storage testing: This verifies that the software application stores data files in the correct directories and reserves sufficient space to prevent unexpected termination due to lack of space.
• Structural testing: This is used to test the internal design or structure of the coding for a particular software application.
• Thread testing: It is a variation of the top-down testing technique where the progressive integration of components follows the implementation of subsets of the requirements.
• Upgrade testing: This verifies if assets created with older versions can be used correctly and that users’ learning is not challenged.
• Workflow testing: It is a scripted end-to-end testing technique duplicating specific workflows expected to be utilized by end-users, usually performed by testing teams.
• Recovery testing: Recovery testing evaluates how well software applications can rebound from crashes, hardware failures, and similar issues. Intentionally breaking the software in various ways is part of the recovery testing process.
• Efficiency testing: Efficiency testing evaluates the resources used and required to construct software applications. You can use efficiency testing tools like WebLOAD and LoadNinja.
• Reliability testing: Reliability testing assumes the software application operates without error within predefined parameters. The system must run for a specific duration and process. The reliability test will also fail if the system encounters issues under predetermined circumstances, such as ensuring all web pages and links remain reliable.
• Portability testing: Portability testing evaluates the software application’s ability to run on multiple operating systems without encountering bugs. This test also evaluates the functionality of software applications under the same operating system but with different hardware configurations. Tools like SQLMap can be used for portability testing.
• Vulnerability management: Vulnerability management constitutes an ongoing process that allows an organization to identify, evaluate, report, manage, and fix security vulnerabilities across endpoints, workloads, and networks. Security teams typically use vulnerability scanning tools like Nessus, Qualys, OpenVAS, and Rapid7 to detect vulnerabilities and implement manual or automated resolution processes.
• Configuration scanning: It is also known as security scanning or configuration analysis and involves finding software, network, and computing system misconfigurations. This check typically verifies software applications against recommended practices outlined by research bodies or compliance standards. Some of these practices include adhering to secure coding principles, implementing robust access controls, regularly updating and patching software, encrypting sensitive data, and establishing strong authentication measures.
• Security audits: A security audit is a type of software testing that follows a systematic procedure to review or audit an application or software aligned with a predefined standard. Audits often involve code or architectural reviews based on security requirements, measuring security vulnerabilities, and evaluating the security gaps of hardware setups, operating systems, and organizational methodologies. It also measures adherence to regulations and compliance standards.
• Risk assessment: Risk evaluation allows the organization to recognize, dissect, and categorize security risks affecting its business-critical assets. This type of evaluation assists in understanding the primary threats to an organization’s infrastructure and prioritizing enhancing software applications. It also helps in long-term strategic planning and budget allocation for security investments.
• Security posture assessment: A security posture evaluation is a test that integrates security scans, ethical hacking, and risk assessment. This process identifies risks confronting an organization and validates and verifies the efficacy of its existing security controls. This evaluation detects any gap in the current security posture and suggests modifications or enhancements to improve the security of safeguarded assets.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have explored different types of software testing. Beyond the mentioned list, numerous other types of software testing and their sub-categories exist. The article has provided insights into the overall methods, approaches, and levels involved in the testing process. However, it’s crucial to discern which testing approaches are ideal for your software project. It’s worth noting that it’s not mandatory to undertake every available type of testing for each project.

Always remember that testing extends beyond merely finding bugs—it is essential for developing trust and confidence in your software application. Therefore, it is essential to approach software testing holistically throughout the entire development life cycle and utilize a diverse toolkit of complementary testing methods.

Citations

• A Study of Software Testing: Categories, Levels, Techniques, and Types: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342579919