Portability Testing – Software Testing

Software testing that assesses a program’s ability to function properly in many environments without requiring major changes is known as portability testing. The goal is to guarantee that the program may be transferred or ported to different platforms, operating systems, browsers, and configurations and remains functional, flexible, and compatible. In this article, we’ll learn about its objectives, types, attributes, advantages, and disadvantages.

What is Portability Testing?

Portability Testing is the type of software testing, which is carried out to determine the degree of ease or difficulty to which a software application can be effectively and efficiently transferred from one hardware, software, or environment to another one. The results of portability testing are measurements of how easily the software component or application will be integrated into the environment and then these results will be compared to the non-functional requirement of portability of the software system.

Objectives of Portability Testing

The objective of the portability testing is:

• Compatibility of Browsers: It verifies the application’s consistent behavior and looks by testing it in various web browsers.
• Testing the Network Environment: It examines the application’s performance in relation to various network parameters, such as latency and bandwidth variations.
• Error Correction and Recovery: It makes sure the program recovers gracefully from failures and exceptions in a variety of settings.
• Validation of Documentation: It verifies that the user manuals and help files, among other materials, are accurate and suitable for various contexts.
• Usability in a Variety of Settings: It makes sure end users have a smooth experience by assessing the overall usability and user experience across several platforms.

Types of Portability Testing

• Hardware Portability Testing: This testing ensures that the software can function on various hardware setups. It requires testing the application across a range of hardware architectures, processors, and devices.
• Browser portability Testing: It tests for browser portability. Testers confirm that the software runs well and shows consistently in popular browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.
• Data Portability Testing: Data portability testing evaluates the program’s capacity to move data between various contexts and systems. It guarantees that throughout transitions, data can be imported and exported without modification or loss.
• Middleware Portability Testing: Testing for middleware portability assesses how well a piece of software works with various middleware services and components. It guarantees that a variety of middleware technologies can be seamlessly integrated with the application.
• Installation and Uninstallation Portability Testing: This kind of testing evaluates how simple it is to install and remove the software in various settings. It verifies if the installation procedure is dependable and consistent across a range of platforms.

Portability Testing Attributes:

• Adaptability: Adaptability is defined as the capacity of the software application to adopt to a particular environment without any effort. Common communication standards between multiple systems help in enhancing the adaptability of the system as a whole.
• Installability: Installability is defined as the capacity of software application to get installed to the desired environment without using extra resources. Installability is performed on a software that is to be installed in a target environment.
• Replaceability: Replaceability is defined as the capacity of software application to replace other software in a particular environment. The software application that is replacing the previous software application must produce the same results on all target environments.
• Co-existence: Co-existence is defined as the capacity of software application to work with other software application on the system without disturbing each other and sharing the same resource. Specially this testing is used in large systems which include multiple subsystems as part of it.

Portability Testing Checklists:

1. Verifying Portability Requirements: Test whether the application can fulfill the portability requirements.
2. Evaluate User Interface and Functional Features Across Browsers: Determine the user interface and functional features of the application in the various browsers.
3. Verifying Fixes from Development Team: Review the defects to the development team so that the defects can be fixed.
4. Identifying Defects Missed in Unit and Integration Testing: Portability testing help to identify defects that were not detected during unit and integration testing.

Advantages of Portability Testing

1. Identification of Dependencies: It helps in identification of the dependencies between two applications.
2. Suitability for Large Systems: It is especially used in large systems which have several subsystems as part of it.
3. User Environment Variability: It is performed when the user of application uses multiple environments.
4. Detection of Missed Defects: Defects that are missed during unit and integration testing are detected during this testing.
5. Performance Testing Across Environments: Performance and responsiveness of an application is tested across various browsers and various operating systems.
6. User Interface and Functional Features: User interface and functional features of the application on various browsers and various operating systems are checked using this testing.
7. Functionality Verification Across Environments: It helps in determining whether the functionality of the application is as expected on various operating systems and various browsers.

Disadvantages of Portability Testing

1. Time Constraints: It is not performed when a time constraint is applicable on the software testing cycle.
2. Budget Requirements: A lot of budget is required for portability testing for various operating systems and various browsers.
3. Maintenance: Support for maintenance of the setup hardware configuration is needed.
4. Complexity in Multi-User Environments: Portability testing in a multi-user environment is very tricky.
5. Storage space: A lot of storage space is required for portability testing.