Good day, again dear reader! With classes wrapping up this week and finals starting, I was a little curious at what other testing techniques there were for testing that were not discussed in class. Of course, this lead me to an article called, “The 7 Common Types of Software Testing“. This article had a mix of things discussed in class and some new ones as well.
The first type of test was a black box test, something we discussed in class. In fact, it was among the first we discussed. For a brief review, black box testing is when we are solely concerned with inputs and outputs and we don’t know anything about how the code works or calculates the actual results.
The second test mentioned is white box testing. Another testing method discussed in class. If I remember correctly, it was discussed on the same day as black box testing. Here in white box testing, we can see inside and get a feel for how the program actually works and calculates outputs.
Acceptance testing is a new one to me. Acceptance testing is two-fold. It tests both the system as a whole and it tests the actual requirements of the customer. This test is geared more towards user-friendliness and usability that some of the other tests.
Automated testing is simply any test that has been automated. This I think is more part of other test techniques and not its own technique.
Regression testing is testing the system to ensure that it works the same way as the previous system. This is done in incremental development to ensure that as new parts are added, the original system isn’t broke.
Functional testing is the testing of the system to see if it is functional. The author points out that there is more than just functionality to test for a program and uses that to justify functional testing as its own technique. I’m not quite sure about this decision but I can stomach it for now.
Exploratory testing is testing a system without any actual test cases and exploring the system looking for things that might be wrong or unexpected. Reading the description, it appears to be for testing systems in unusual ways that might not be conventional and testing the boundaries of a system, possibly uncovering bugs that normal testing methods might not find.
Of these new test methods, none of them have really captivated me. Exploratory testing, being honest, sounds a little silly and I can’t really see too many benefits to it. Out of all seven I quite like acceptance testing as it seems to keep the focus shifted to the customer and not just to it the system works or not.
Until next time readers!
From the blog CS@Worcester – Computer Science Discovery at WSU by mesitecsblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.