Software Testing Questions

Data Control Language takes caare of security and authorization

a.) Testing and Debugging 

Testing is process of verifying if the application matches requirements and reporting bugs; Testing is usually done by an independent testing team while debugging is a process of finding and fixing bugs with the intention of reducing bugs; Debugging is usually done by the programmer.

b.) Two tier and Three tier architecture

In a two tier architecture there is a data server and a client application. Client application directly accesses the server data. In a three tier architecture there is a data server, a client application and a server application. Client application calls the server application which in turn fetches data from the data server and returns back to client application.

c.) Alpha testing and Beta testing

Alpha testing is conducting acceptance testing in the environment where the application was developed. It is done by the customer. Beta testing is conducting acceptance testing is the customer environment. It is done by the group of customers or users who will actually be using it.

d.) Static testing and dynamic testing

Static testing is checking the application without actually running the application whereas dynamic testing checks the application by running it.

A test plan is the master document that contains all details pertaining to testing of the application. Its contents include:

Testing scope - what is included and what is not included in the testing of the current project 

Assumptions - what are the assumptions that are made for this project 

Milestones - major dates like when testing is going to begin, when it is planned to end, what is the trace review date, what is the production date etc. 

Resources - the resources working on this project along with their contact details 

Defect tracking mechanism - what defect tracking tool will be used, what is the SLA for fixing Critical to Low level IRs etc. 

Test management procedures - who will be notified when there is a critical IR, what reports will be sent daily, if status calls will be held daily or weekly, where will it be held, who is required to join etc. 

Work allocation - resource distribution if more projects are being tested 

Entry and exit criterion - when can a project be accepted for testing (eg. only when smoke testing passes) and when can a project be termed as testing complete (eg. when all testcases are executed and all high level bugs are fixed)

Testing is a process used for revealing defects in s/w and for establishing that the s/w has attained a specific degree of quality.

The s/w testing group’s main objective is to ensure that the s/w is doing what it is supposed to do as well as the s/w is not doing what it is not supposed to do. With this objective, it is clear that it is necessary to have a separate group for testing the s/w other than the group which developed it.

Also, bugs in the s/w can cause severe monetary as well as other loss to the organization. So it is important to allocate some budget for the testing group.

The main task of Software Quality Assurance Group is to examine the overall s/w development process and to create and enforce standards and methods to improve it with the goal of preventing bugs from ever occurring. With this definition, it is imperative that the QA helps an organization in continuous performance improvement and strive for perfection.

Risk analysis is a method to determine how much risk is involved in something. In testing, it can be used to determine when to test something or whether to test something at all. Items with higher risk values should be tested early and often. Items with lower risk value can be tested later, or not at all. It can also be used with defects. Severity tells us how bad a defect is: "how much damage can it cause?" Priority tells us how soon it is desired to fix the defect: "should we fix this and if so, by when?"

Defects with High Severity and Priority are tested first.

Glass Box (or white box) testing is the process of giving i/p to the system and checking how the system processes i/p to generate o/p

Black Box testing is the process of giving i/p to the system and checking if the system is giving correct o/p without bothering how the o/p is generated.

As we can see from the definitions, the role of black box testing is to ensure that the o/p generated is correct. And role of white box testing is to ensure that methods used to generate the o/p are correct.