Software Testing Social Network

Smoke Testing: Smoke testing is the practice of going over a new build at a very high level. What I tell my test teams is that smoke testing is used to make sure you can get at each major component of a project. Once a project is smoke tested, deeper testing can get started. It has its benefits in large, distributed test teams -- especially when the project is very large and takes a long time to install. For instance, building an application like Microsoft Office or Windows Vista requires smoke tests before a testing organization commits itself to cleaning a bunch of machines and installing a new build.

Integration Testing: This is the activity of taking a new piece of functionality and testing it deeply. It does not involve testing data as it passes in and out of this functionality. For instance, integration testing a VAT calculation formula would involve inputting various values and validating the output.

System Testing: This is the art of tying each individual functional unit together into a system and testing end-to-end. In the previous example, it might mean creating a shopping basket of various items (taxable and non-taxable), and passing that basket object to the VAT calculation engine. Once the VAT has been calculated, pass the output to a payment system and ensure the proper payment is made. It's a 'day in the life' of a piece of data.

Data Driven Testing: Data-driven testing is great for testing APIs and Web services -- you input a series of rows of data and analyze the results. It's what makes testing managers and IT directors feel warm and fuzzy, because data-driven tests can be written in no time and executed even faster. Tools like FITness are great for DDT.

Monkey Testing: Monkey testing is the art of generating random tests via automation. There are smart monkeys and dumb monkeys. Dumb monkeys randomly exercise functionality in an application -- for instance, randomly clicking UI elements or randomly inserting data, rarely with validating output. They're often used to expose issues like memory leaks. Smart monkeys, on the other hand are, well, smarter! They randomly interact with the software being tested, but have state or model information which allows them to validate the results of interaction. Some smart monkeys are so smart that they actually queue up new tests based on the results of previous tests.