Chapter 8 – Software Testing

Summary

Chapter 8 Software testing 1

 Topics covered
• Development testing
• Test-driven development
• Release testing
• User testing

Chapter 8 Software testing 2

 Program testing
• Testing is intended to show that a program does what it is intended
to do and to discover program defects before it is put into use.
• When you test software, you execute a program using artificial
data.
• You check the results of the test run for errors, anomalies or
information about the program’s non-functional attributes.
• Can reveal the presence of errors NOT their
absence.
• Testing is part of a more general verification and validation process,
which also includes static validation techniques.

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 Program testing goals
• To demonstrate to the developer and the customer that the
software meets its requirements.
– For custom software, this means that there should be at least
one test for every requirement in the requirements document.
For generic software products, it means that there should be
tests for all of the system features, plus combinations of these
features, that will be incorporated in the product release.
• To discover situations in which the behavior of the software
is incorrect, undesirable or does not conform to its
specification.
– Defect testing is concerned with rooting out undesirable system
behavior such as system crashes, unwanted interactions with
other systems, incorrect computations and data corruption.

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 Validation and defect testing
• The first goal leads to validation testing
– You expect the system to perform correctly using a
given set of test cases that reflect the system’s
expected use.
• The second goal leads to defect testing
– The test cases are designed to expose defects. The
test cases in defect testing can be deliberately
obscure and need not reflect how the system is
normally used.

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 Testing process goals
• Validation testing
– To demonstrate to the developer and the system customer that the
software meets its requirements
– A successful test shows that the system operates as intended.
• Defect testing
– To discover faults or defects in the software where its behaviour is
incorrect or not in conformance with its specification
– A successful test is a test that makes the system perform incorrectly
and so exposes a defect in the system.

Chapter 8 Software testing 6

An input-output model of program
testing

Chapter 8 Software testing 7

 Verification vs validation
• Verification:
"Are we building the product right”.
• The software should conform to its
specification.
• Validation:
"Are we building the right product”.
• The software should do what the user really
requires.

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 V & V confidence
• Aim of V & V is to establish confidence that the
system is ‘fit for purpose’.
• Depends on system’s purpose, user expectations
and marketing environment
– Software purpose
• The level of confidence depends on how critical the software
is to an organisation.
– User expectations
• Users may have low expectations of certain kinds of
software.
– Marketing environment
• Getting a product to market early may be more important
than finding defects in the program.

Chapter 8 Software testing 9

 Inspections and testing

• Software inspections Concerned with analysis of

the static system representation to discover
problems (static verification)
– May be supplement by tool-based document and code analysis.
– Discussed in Chapter 15.
• Software testing Concerned with exercising and
observing product behaviour (dynamic verification)
– The system is executed with test data and its operational behaviour is
observed.

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Inspections and testing

Chapter 8 Software testing 11

 Software inspections
• These involve people examining the source representation
with the aim of discovering anomalies and defects.
• Inspections not require execution of a system so may be used
before implementation.
• They may be applied to any representation of the system
(requirements, design,configuration data, test data, etc.).
• They have been shown to be an effective technique for
discovering program errors.

Chapter 8 Software testing 12

 Advantages of inspections
• During testing, errors can mask (hide) other errors.
Because inspection is a static process, you don’t have
to be concerned with interactions between errors.
• Incomplete versions of a system can be inspected
without additional costs. If a program is incomplete,
then you need to develop specialized test harnesses to
test the parts that are available.
• As well as searching for program defects, an inspection
can also consider broader quality attributes of a
program, such as compliance with standards,
portability and maintainability.

Chapter 8 Software testing 13

 Inspections and testing
• Inspections and testing are complementary and not opposing
verification techniques.
• Both should be used during the V & V process.
• Inspections can check conformance with a specification but
not conformance with the customer’s real requirements.
• Inspections cannot check non-functional characteristics such
as performance, usability, etc.

Chapter 8 Software testing 14

A model of the software testing
process

Chapter 8 Software testing 15

 Stages of testing
• Development testing, where the system is
tested during development to discover bugs
and defects.
• Release testing, where a separate testing team
test a complete version of the system before it
is released to users.
• User testing, where users or potential users of
a system test the system in their own
environment.

Chapter 8 Software testing 16

 Development testing
• Development testing includes all testing activities that
are carried out by the team developing the system.
– Unit testing, where individual program units or object
classes are tested. Unit testing should focus on testing the
functionality of objects or methods.
– Component testing, where several individual units are
integrated to create composite components. Component
testing should focus on testing component interfaces.
– System testing, where some or all of the components in a
system are integrated and the system is tested as a whole.
System testing should focus on testing component
interactions.

Chapter 8 Software testing 17

 Unit testing
• Unit testing is the process of testing individual
components in isolation.
• It is a defect testing process.
• Units may be:
– Individual functions or methods within an object
– Object classes with several attributes and
methods
– Composite components with defined interfaces
used to access their functionality.

Chapter 8 Software testing 18

 Object class testing
• Complete test coverage of a class involves
– Testing all operations associated with an object
– Setting and interrogating all object attributes
– Exercising the object in all possible states.
• Inheritance makes it more difficult to design
object class tests as the information to be
tested is not localised.

Chapter 8 Software testing 19

The weather station object interface

Chapter 8 Software testing 20

 Weather station testing
• Need to define test cases for reportWeather,
calibrate, test, startup and shutdown.
• Using a state model, identify sequences of state
transitions to be tested and the event sequences
to cause these transitions
• For example:
– Shutdown -> Running-> Shutdown
– Configuring-> Running-> Testing -> Transmitting ->
Running
– Running-> Collecting-> Running-> Summarizing ->
Transmitting -> Running

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 Automated testing
• Whenever possible, unit testing should be automated
so that tests are run and checked without manual
intervention.
• In automated unit testing, you make use of a test
automation framework (such as JUnit) to write and run
your program tests.
• Unit testing frameworks provide generic test classes
that you extend to create specific test cases. They can
then run all of the tests that you have implemented
and report, often through some GUI, on the success of
otherwise of the tests.

Chapter 8 Software testing 22

 Automated test components
• A setup part, where you initialize the system
with the test case, namely the inputs and
expected outputs.
• A call part, where you call the object or
method to be tested.
• An assertion part where you compare the
result of the call with the expected result. If
the assertion evaluates to true, the test has
been successful if false, then it has failed.

Chapter 8 Software testing 23

 Unit test effectiveness
• The test cases should show that, when used as
expected, the component that you are testing does
what it is supposed to do.
• If there are defects in the component, these should be
revealed by test cases.
• This leads to 2 types of unit test case:
– The first of these should reflect normal operation of a
program and should show that the component works as
expected.
– The other kind of test case should be based on testing
experience of where common problems arise. It should
use abnormal inputs to check that these are properly
processed and do not crash the component.

Chapter 8 Software testing 24

 Testing strategies
• Partition testing, where you identify groups of
inputs that have common characteristics and
should be processed in the same way.
– You should choose tests from within each of these
groups.
• Guideline-based testing, where you use
testing guidelines to choose test cases.
– These guidelines reflect previous experience of
the kinds of errors that programmers often make
when developing components.
Chapter 8 Software testing 25
 Partition testing
• Input data and output results often fall into
different classes where all members of a class
are related.
• Each of these classes is an equivalence
partition or domain where the program
behaves in an equivalent way for each class
member.
• Test cases should be chosen from each
partition.

Chapter 8 Software testing 26

Equivalence partitioning

Chapter 8 Software testing 27

Equivalence partitions

Chapter 8 Software testing 28

 Testing guidelines (sequences)
• Test software with sequences which have only
a single value.
• Use sequences of different sizes in different
tests.
• Derive tests so that the first, middle and last
elements of the sequence are accessed.
• Test with sequences of zero length.

Chapter 8 Software testing 29

 General testing guidelines
• Choose inputs that force the system to
generate all error messages
• Design inputs that cause input buffers to
overflow
• Repeat the same input or series of inputs
numerous times
• Force invalid outputs to be generated
• Force computation results to be too large or
too small.
Chapter 8 Software testing 30
 Key points
• Testing can only show the presence of errors in a
program. It cannot demonstrate that there are no
remaining faults.
• Development testing is the responsibility of the
software development team. A separate team should
be responsible for testing a system before it is released
to customers.
• Development testing includes unit testing, in which you
test individual objects and methods component
testing in which you test related groups of objects and
system testing, in which you test partial or complete
systems.

Chapter 8 Software testing 31

 Component testing
• Software components are often composite
components that are made up of several interacting
objects.
– For example, in the weather station system, the
reconfiguration component includes objects that deal with
each aspect of the reconfiguration.
• You access the functionality of these objects through
the defined component interface.
• Testing composite components should therefore focus
on showing that the component interface behaves
according to its specification.
– You can assume that unit tests on the individual objects
within the component have been completed.

Chapter 8 Software testing 32

Interface testing

Chapter 8 Software testing 33

 Interface testing
• Objectives are to detect faults due to interface
errors or invalid assumptions about interfaces.
• Interface types
– Parameter interfaces Data passed from one method or
procedure to another.
– Shared memory interfaces Block of memory is shared
between procedures or functions.
– Procedural interfaces Sub-system encapsulates a set
of procedures to be called by other sub-systems.
– Message passing interfaces Sub-systems request
services from other sub-systems

Chapter 8 Software testing 34

 Interface errors
• Interface misuse
– A calling component calls another component and makes an error in
its use of its interface e.g. parameters in the wrong order.
• Interface misunderstanding
– A calling component embeds assumptions about the behaviour of the
called component which are incorrect.
• Timing errors
– The called and the calling component operate at different speeds and
out-of-date information is accessed.

Chapter 8 Software testing 35

 Interface testing guidelines
• Design tests so that parameters to a called procedure are at
the extreme ends of their ranges.
• Always test pointer parameters with null pointers.
• Design tests which cause the component to fail.
• Use stress testing in message passing systems.
• In shared memory systems, vary the order in which
components are activated.

Chapter 8 Software testing 36

 System testing
• System testing during development involves
integrating components to create a version of the
system and then testing the integrated system.
• The focus in system testing is testing the
interactions between components.
• System testing checks that components are
compatible, interact correctly and transfer the
right data at the right time across their interfaces.
• System testing tests the emergent behaviour of a
system.
Chapter 8 Software testing 37
 System and component testing
• During system testing, reusable components that
have been separately developed and off-the-shelf
systems may be integrated with newly developed
components. The complete system is then tested.
• Components developed by different team
members or sub-teams may be integrated at this
stage. System testing is a collective rather than an
individual process.
– In some companies, system testing may involve a
separate testing team with no involvement from
designers and programmers.

Chapter 8 Software testing 38

 Use-case testing
• The use-cases developed to identify system
interactions can be used as a basis for system
testing.
• Each use case usually involves several system
components so testing the use case forces
these interactions to occur.
• The sequence diagrams associated with the
use case documents the components and
interactions that are being tested.

Chapter 8 Software testing 39

Collect weather data sequence chart

Chapter 8 Software testing 40

 Testing policies
• Exhaustive system testing is impossible so testing
policies which define the required system test
coverage may be developed.
• Examples of testing policies:
– All system functions that are accessed through menus
should be tested.
– Combinations of functions (e.g. text formatting) that
are accessed through the same menu must be tested.
– Where user input is provided, all functions must be
tested with both correct and incorrect input.

Chapter 8 Software testing 41

 Test-driven development
• Test-driven development (TDD) is an approach to
program development in which you inter-leave testing
and code development.
• Tests are written before code and ‘passing’ the tests is
the critical driver of development.
• You develop code incrementally, along with a test for
that increment. You don’t move on to the next
increment until the code that you have developed
passes its test.
• TDD was introduced as part of agile methods such as
Extreme Programming. However, it can also be used in
plan-driven development processes.

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Test-driven development

Chapter 8 Software testing 43

 TDD process activities
• Start by identifying the increment of functionality that
is required. This should normally be small and
implementable in a few lines of code.
• Write a test for this functionality and implement this as
an automated test.
• Run the test, along with all other tests that have been
implemented. Initially, you have not implemented the
functionality so the new test will fail.
• Implement the functionality and re-run the test.
• Once all tests run successfully, you move on to
implementing the next chunk of functionality.
Chapter 8 Software testing 44
 Benefits of test-driven development
• Code coverage
– Every code segment that you write has at least one associated
test so all code written has at least one test.
• Regression testing
– A regression test suite is developed incrementally as a program
is developed.
• Simplified debugging
– When a test fails, it should be obvious where the problem lies.
The newly written code needs to be checked and modified.
• System documentation
– The tests themselves are a form of documentation that describe
what the code should be doing.

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 Regression testing
• Regression testing is testing the system to
check that changes have not ‘broken’
previously working code.
• In a manual testing process, regression testing
is expensive but, with automated testing, it is
simple and straightforward. All tests are rerun
every time a change is made to the program.
• Tests must run ‘successfully’ before the
change is committed.

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 Release testing
• Release testing is the process of testing a particular
release of a system that is intended for use outside of the
development team.
• The primary goal of the release testing process is to
convince the supplier of the system that it is good enough
for use.
– Release testing, therefore, has to show that the system
delivers its specified functionality, performance and
dependability, and that it does not fail during normal use.
• Release testing is usually a black-box testing process
where tests are only derived from the system
specification.

Chapter 8 Software testing 47

Release testing and system testing
• Release testing is a form of system testing.
• Important differences:
– A separate team that has not been involved in the
system development, should be responsible for
release testing.
– System testing by the development team should focus
on discovering bugs in the system (defect testing). The
objective of release testing is to check that the system
meets its requirements and is good enough for
external use (validation testing).

Chapter 8 Software testing 48

 Requirements based testing
• Requirements-based testing involves examining
each requirement and developing a test or tests
for it.
• MHC-PMS requirements:
– If a patient is known to be allergic to any particular
medication, then prescription of that medication shall
result in a warning message being issued to the
system user.
– If a prescriber chooses to ignore an allergy warning,
they shall provide a reason why this has been ignored.

Chapter 8 Software testing 49

 Requirements tests
• Set up a patient record with no known allergies. Prescribe medication for allergies
that are known to exist. Check that a warning message is not issued by the system.
• Set up a patient record with a known allergy. Prescribe the medication to that the
patient is allergic to, and check that the warning is issued by the system.
• Set up a patient record in which allergies to two or more drugs are recorded.
Prescribe both of these drugs separately and check that the correct warning for
each drug is issued.
• Prescribe two drugs that the patient is allergic to. Check that two warnings are
correctly issued.
• Prescribe a drug that issues a warning and overrule that warning. Check that the
system requires the user to provide information explaining why the warning was
overruled.

Chapter 8 Software testing 50

 Features tested by scenario
• Authentication by logging on to the system.
• Downloading and uploading of specified patient
records to a laptop.
• Home visit scheduling.
• Encryption and decryption of patient records on a
mobile device.
• Record retrieval and modification.
• Links with the drugs database that maintains
side-effect information.
• The system for call prompting.

Chapter 8 Software testing 51

A usage scenario for the MHC-PMS
Kate is a nurse who specializes in mental health care. One of her responsibilities
is to visit patients at home to check that their treatment is effective and that they
are not suffering from medication side -effects.
On a day for home visits, Kate logs into the MHC-PMS and uses it to print her
schedule of home visits for that day, along with summary information about the
patients to be visited. She requests that the records for these patients be
downloaded to her laptop. She is prompted for her key phrase to encrypt the
records on the laptop.
One of the patients that she visits is Jim, who is being treated with medication for
depression. Jim feels that the medication is helping him but believes that it has the
side -effect of keeping him awake at night. Kate looks up Jim’s record and is
prompted for her key phrase to decrypt the record. She checks the drug
prescribed and queries its side effects. Sleeplessness is a known side effect so
she notes the problem in Jim’s record and suggests that he visits the clinic to have
his medication changed. He agrees so Kate enters a prompt to call him when she
gets back to the clinic to make an appointment with a physician. She ends the
consultation and the system re-encrypts Jim’s record.
After, finishing her consultations, Kate returns to the clinic and uploads the records
of patients visited to the database. The system generates a call list for Kate of
those patients who she has to contact for follow-up information and make clinic
appointments. Chapter 8 Software testing 52
 Performance testing
• Part of release testing may involve testing the
emergent properties of a system, such as performance
and reliability.
• Tests should reflect the profile of use of the system.
• Performance tests usually involve planning a series of
tests where the load is steadily increased until the
system performance becomes unacceptable.
• Stress testing is a form of performance testing where
the system is deliberately overloaded to test its failure
behaviour.

Chapter 8 Software testing 53

 User testing
• User or customer testing is a stage in the testing
process in which users or customers provide
input and advice on system testing.
• User testing is essential, even when
comprehensive system and release testing have
been carried out.
– The reason for this is that influences from the user’s
working environment have a major effect on the
reliability, performance, usability and robustness of a
system. These cannot be replicated in a testing
environment.
Chapter 8 Software testing 54
 Types of user testing
• Alpha testing
– Users of the software work with the development
team to test the software at the developer’s site.
• Beta testing
– A release of the software is made available to users to
allow them to experiment and to raise problems that
they discover with the system developers.
• Acceptance testing
– Customers test a system to decide whether or not it is
ready to be accepted from the system developers and
deployed in the customer environment. Primarily for
custom systems.
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The acceptance testing process

Chapter 8 Software testing 56

 Stages in the acceptance testing process

• Define acceptance criteria

• Plan acceptance testing
• Derive acceptance tests
• Run acceptance tests
• Negotiate test results
• Reject/accept system

Chapter 8 Software testing 57

Agile methods and acceptance testing
• In agile methods, the user/customer is part of the
development team and is responsible for making
decisions on the acceptability of the system.
• Tests are defined by the user/customer and are
integrated with other tests in that they are run
automatically when changes are made.
• There is no separate acceptance testing process.
• Main problem here is whether or not the
embedded user is ‘typical’ and can represent the
interests of all system stakeholders.
Chapter 8 Software testing 58
 Key points
• When testing software, you should try to ‘break’ the software by using
experience and guidelines to choose types of test case that have been
effective in discovering defects in other systems.
• Wherever possible, you should write automated tests. The tests are
embedded in a program that can be run every time a change is made to a
system.
• Test-first development is an approach to development where tests are
written before the code to be tested.
• Scenario testing involves inventing a typical usage scenario and using this
to derive test cases.
• Acceptance testing is a user testing process where the aim is to decide if
the software is good enough to be deployed and used in its operational
environment.

Chapter 8 Software testing 59