Chapter 8 – Software Testing

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Topics covered

✧ Development testing
✧ Test-driven development
✧ Release testing
✧ User testing

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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.

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An input-output model of program testing

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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.

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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

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A model of the software testing process

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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.

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Development testing

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The weather station object interface

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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.

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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.

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Choosing unit test cases

✧ 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.
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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.

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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.

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Equivalence partitioning

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Equivalence partitions

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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.

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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.

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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.
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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

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Interface testing

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Collect weather data sequence chart

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Test cases derived from sequence diagram

✧ An input of a request for a report should have an

associated acknowledgement. A report should ultimately
be returned from the request.
▪ You should create summarized data that can be used to check
that the report is correctly organized.
✧ An input request for a report to WeatherStation results in
a summarized report being generated.
▪ Can be tested by creating raw data corresponding to the
summary that you have prepared for the test of SatComms and
checking that the WeatherStation object correctly produces this
summary. This raw data is also used to test the WeatherData
object.

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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.

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Test-driven development

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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

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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.
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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

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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.

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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).

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Requirements based testing

✧ Requirements-based testing involves examining each

requirement and developing a test or tests for it.
✧ Mentcare system 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.

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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.

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 A usage scenario for the Mentcare system

George is a nurse who specializes in mental healthcare. One of his 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, George logs into the Mentcare system and uses it to print his schedule of
home visits for that day, along with summary information about the patients to be visited. He
requests that the records for these patients be downloaded to his laptop. He is prompted for his key
phrase to encrypt the records on the laptop.
One of the patients that he 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. George looks up Jim’s record and is prompted for his key phrase to decrypt the record. He
checks the drug prescribed and queries its side effects. Sleeplessness is a known side effect so he
notes the problem in Jim’s record and suggests that he visits the clinic to have his medication
changed. Jim agrees so George enters a prompt to call him when he gets back to the clinic to make
an appointment with a physician. George ends the consultation and the system re-encrypts Jim’s
record.
After, finishing his consultations, George returns to the clinic and uploads the records of patients
visited to the database. The system generates a call list for George of those patients who He has to
contact for follow-up information and make clinic appointments.

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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.
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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.

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User testing

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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.

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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

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Stages in the acceptance testing process

✧ Define acceptance criteria

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

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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.

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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.

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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.
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