Web Service Testing

The great advantage of Web services is that they empower different types of entities to communicate with one another through platform-independent protocols such as SOAP, XML, and HTTP. However, the tradeoff for this flexibility is that this open, non-native traffic brings with it additional overhead. Take, for example, an enterprise that wants to use a Web service to integrate a J2EE application with a variety of client types or other applications

In this situation, many different types of clients can now access the information contained within the EJBs by going through the Web service layer. But this introduces a potential issue: a new layer of communication has been added with its own overhead and potential for failure into an application whose quality and performance was formerly under control. If the Web service layer makes the application slower or introduces quality issues it could affect application service-levels and negatively impact end users. The only way to ensure that this doesn’t happen is to test the quality and performance of these Web Services before they are deployed.

Web Services are applications that exist within a network. Since web services are being used more and more by businesses, security and testing are essential to web services. Testing ensures that SOA deployments can be reliable and successful for an enterprise. However, there are many gray areas that often occur during testing. To avoid these gray areas it is important to focus on performance, security, SOAP attachments, WSDL, and interoperability.

At a very basic level, one needs to consider how the remote method calls take place via SOAP, how the data is passed, how to test the transport layer, discovery methods, response data, scalability, performance, integrity etc.Testing Approach: Test Case Design, Test Execution shall be Top-Down and Bottom-Up respectively. Documenting test cases for the individual services can be a tedious task and subject matter experts can take part in unit testing the individual service so that they are error-free in the downstream process. This approach facilitates meeting the high-level business requirements and can also be used to create the data contents for the exchanged message. This will avoid the major pitfall of delivering a technically acceptable solution which fails to deliver business value. Once this is done, the data must be formatted into messages (XML) that express service request and replies from consumer and provider respectively.

Test tools must be used before and after publishing a web service. To do this, the WSDL must be loaded into the tool. The tool then acts as a client of the web service and sends SOAP requests. This describes a simple consumer-producer test scenario. Since web services depend on other services, the whole chain must be tested in order to find the problems. If a web service is not performing correctly, it may be due to another web service which it is attached to. This is easy to find if one simply monitors the CPU and memory statistics of each web service as the test transaction occurs. Many performance characteristics must be looked at such as response times and fail/pass ratios.

Security validation is also very important to evaluate when testing web services. This must be taken care of at the message level by using tools such as signatures and encryption. Test cases are also important to look at since a negative test case shows where the web service is inefficient.

SOAP is used to carry complex attachments through a network. These transmissions must also be evaluated to ensure that the attachment is not corrupted. To test a SOAP attachment, one can simply make sure that the upload and download values match and re-calculate the check-sum. The break point for message size must also be figured out.

WSDL acts as an important contract between the consumer and producer. However, this also provides gray area in web services testing since it is often not accessible through a firewall after handled by a partner. To avoid this dilemma, it is important to flatten the WSDL before handing it over to a trading partner. WSDL quality must also be identified.

Web Services Process Flow

A service provider describes its service using WSDL. This definition is published to a directory of services. The directory could use Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI). Other forms of directories can also be used. Service consumer issues one or more queries to the directory to locate a service and determine how to communicate with that service. Part of the WSDL provided by the service provider is passed to the service consumer and this tells the service consumer what the requests and responses are for the service provider.

Web Services

A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over a network.
The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It has an interface described in a machine-process able format (specifically Web Services Description Language WSDL). Other systems interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its description using SOAP messages, typically conveyed using HTTP with an XML serialization in conjunction with other Web-related standards.

The W3C also states, "We can identify two major classes of Web services, REST-compliant Web services, in which the primary purpose of the service is to manipulate XML representations of Web resources using a uniform set of "stateless" operations; and arbitrary Web services, in which the service may expose an arbitrary set of operations.

Web services are software systems designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. This interoperability is gained through a set of XML-based open standards, such as WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI. These standards provide a common approach for defining, publishing, and using web services.

The full-function web services platform can be thought of as XML, HTTP, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI. At higher levels, one might also add technologies such as XAML, XLANG, XKMS, and XFS -- services that are not universally accepted as mandatory.

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a protocol specification that defines a uniform way of passing XML-encoded data. It also defines a way to perform remote procedure calls (RPCs) using HTTP as the underlying communication protocol.

UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration Service) provides a mechanism for clients to dynamically find other web services. Using a UDDI interface, businesses can dynamically connect to services provided by external business partners. A UDDI registry is similar to a CORBA trader, or it can be thought of as a DNS service for business applications.

Web Services Description Language (WSDL) is a new specification to describe networked XML-based services. It provides a simple way for service providers to describe the basic format of requests to their systems regardless of the underlying protocol (such as Simple Object Access Protocol or XML) or encoding (such as Multipurpose Internet Messaging Extensions). WSDL is a key part of the effort of the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) initiative to provide directories and descriptions of such on-line services for electronic business.

SOA Testing Challanges

When it comes to testing SOA applications, one has to look beyond functionality and performance (load) testing. SOA testing requires testing of interfaces and services that might bring together diverse systems and platforms, along with other performance (latency) and security related aspects.
One of the other challenges to be tackled in SOA Testing is the availability of the environment with the dependent underlying services and/or applications. For instance, an SOA Implementation might bring together two or more autonomous internal applications/services when composing a business process.
The availability of these internal applications/services becomes highly important during integration testing in parts as well as during end-to-end testing of the business process.
Some of the SOA Testing challenges are:
• Services that do not have a user interface
• Data driven business logic within services
• External services to the organization
• The quality of 'service' software will be vital to promote reuse and facilitate business agility. Services that have known bugs and quality issues will not be reused by the development teams. A significant increase in testing activities and test assets (functional, performance and security regression suites that include sophisticated harnesses and stubs) will be required at a service (program) level
• Predicting the future usage of services to assist with performance, load, stress, scalability
• As your SOA evolves, security testing will have a higher priority and profile within your organizations test strategy
Additional considerations:
• In SOA, Services are based on heterogeneous technologies. The ability to string together multiple types of components to form a business process requires unconstrained thinking from an architect's perspective, and test planning and scheduling complexities from a tester's perspective.
• In SOA, application logic is in the middle-tier, operating within numerous technologies, residing outside the department, or even outside the company.
• To test SOA, you need to go far beyond merely testing a user interface or browser screen. Web Services (WSDL/SOAP) will be an important component for many SOAs, but if you're only testing Web Services, you are not likely to test the entire technology stack that makes up the application. What are the transactions happening at the messaging layer? Is the right entry being reflected in the database?

Multiple Choice Testing Question Answers

1 : With thorough testing it is possible to remove all defects from a program prior to delivery to the customer.

a. True

b. False
ANSWER : b

2 : Which of the following are characteristics of testable Software ?
a. observability
b. simplicity
c. stability
d. all of the above
ANSWER : d

3 : The testing technique that requires devising test cases to demonstrate that each program function is operational is called
a. black-box testing
b. glass-box testing
c. grey-box testing
d. white-box testing
ANSWER : a

4 : The testing technique that requires devising test cases to exercise the internal logic of a software module is called
a. behavioral testing
b. black-box testing
c. grey-box testing
d. white-box testing
ANSWER : d

5 : What types of errors are missed by black-box testing and can be uncovered by white-box testing ?

a. behavioral errors

b. logic errors

c. performance errors

d. typographical errors

e. both b and d

ANSWER : e

6 : Program flow graphs are identical to program flowcharts.

a. True

b. False

ANSWER : b

7 : The cyclomatic complexity metric provides the designer with information regarding the number of

a. cycles in the program

b. errors in the program

c. independent logic paths in the program

d. statements in the program

ANSWER : c

8 : The cyclomatic complexity of a program can be computed directly from a PDL representation of an algorithm without drawing a program flow graph

.a. True

b. False

ANSWER : a

9 : Condition testing is a control structure testing technique where the criteria used to design test cases is that they

a. rely on basis path testing

b. exercise the logical conditions in a program module

c. select test paths based on the locations and uses of variables

d. focus on testing the validity of loop constructs

ANSWER : b

10 : Data flow testing is a control structure testing technique where the criteria used to design test cases is that they

a. rely on basis path testing

b. exercise the logical conditions in a program module

c. select test paths based on the locations and uses of variables

d. focus on testing the validity of loop constructs

ANSWER : c

11 : Loop testing is a control structure testing technique where the criteria used to design test cases is that they

a. rely basis path testing

b. exercise the logical conditions in a program module

c. select test paths based on the locations and uses of variables

d. focus on testing the validity of loop constructs

ANSWER : d

12 : Black-box testing attempts to find errors in which of the following categories

a. incorrect or missing functions

b. interface errors

c. performance errors

d. all of the abovee. none of the above

ANSWER : d

13 : Graph-based testing methods can only be used for object-oriented systems

a. True

b. False

ANSWER : b

14 : Equivalence testing divides the input domain into classes of data from which test cases can be derived to reduce the total number of test cases that must be developed.

a. True b. False

ANSWER : a

15 : Boundary value analysis can only be used to do white-box testing.

a. True

b. False

ANSWER : b

16 : Comparison testing is typically done to test two competing products as part of customer market analysis prior to product release.

a. True

b. False

ANSWER : b

17 : Orthogonal array testing enables the test designer to maximize the coverage of the test cases devised for relatively small input domains.

a. True b. False

ANSWER : a

18 : Test case design "in the small" for OO software is driven by the algorithmic detail ofthe individual operations.

a. True

b. False

ANSWER : a

19 : Encapsulation of attributes and operations inside objects makes it easy to obtain object state information during testing.

a. True

b. False

ANSWER : b

20 : Use-cases can provide useful input into the design of black-box and state-based tests of OO software.

a. True

b. False

ANSWER : a

21 : Fault-based testing is best reserved for

a. conventional software testing

b. operations and classes that are critical or suspect

c. use-case validation

d. white-box testing of operator algorithms

ANSWER : b

22 : Testing OO class operations is made more difficult by

a. encapsulation

b. inheritance

c. polymorphism

d. both b and c

ANSWER : d

23 : Scenario-based testing

a. concentrates on actor and software interaction

b. misses errors in specifications

c. misses errors in subsystem interactions

d. both a and b

ANSWER : a

24 : Deep structure testing is not designed to

a. examine object behaviors

b. exercise communication mechanisms

c. exercise object dependencies

d. exercise structure observable by the user

ANSWER : d

25 : Random order tests are conducted to exercise different class instance life histories.

a. True

b. False

ANSWER : a

26 : Which of these techniques is not useful for partition testing at the class level

a. attribute-based partitioning

b. category-based partitioning

c. equivalence class partitioning

d. state-based partitioning

ANSWER : c

27 : Multiple class testing is too complex to be tested using random test cases.

a. True

b. False

ANSWER : b

28 : Tests derived from behavioral class models should be based on the

a. data flowdiagram

b. object-relation diagram

c. state diagram

d. use-case diagram

ANSWER : c

29 : Client/server architectures cannot be properly tested because network load is highly variable.

a. True

b. False

ANSWER : b

30 : Real-time applications add a new and potentially difficult element to the testing mix

a. performance

b. reliability

c. security

d. time

ANSWER : d

What Is WSDL?

WSDL: Web Service Description Language

This New Breed of dot com needs a solution that can describe the services .the web services it offers specially this means that you need a format or some type of grammar with which you can describe the answers to the following questions.

• What are the services offered in Your Online business?
• How Can You Invoke Your business services?
• What information do your business services need from the user when he or she invoke your Service?
• How Will the user Provide the required Information?
• In which Format will the services send information back to user?

Testing Definition In Simple

• What's Ad Hoc Testing ?
• A testing where the tester tries to break the software by randomly trying functionality of software.
• What's the Accessibility Testing ?
• Testing that determines if software will be usable by people with disabilities.
• What's the Alpha Testing ?
• The Alpha Testing is conducted at the developer sites and in a controlled environment by the end user of the software
• What's the Beta Testing ?
• Testing the application after the installation at the client place।
• What is Component Testing ?
• Testing of individual software components (Unit Testing).
• What's Compatibility Testing ?
• In Compatibility testing we can test that software is compatible with other elements of system.
• What is Concurrency Testing ?
• Multi-user testing geared towards determining the effects of accessing the same application code, module or database records. Identifies and measures the level of locking, deadlocking and use of single-threaded code and locking semaphores.
• What is Conformance Testing ?
• The process of testing that an implementation conforms to the specification on which it is based. Usually applied to testing conformance to a formal standard.
• What is Context Driven Testing ?
• The context-driven school of software testing is flavor of Agile Testing that advocates continuous and creative evaluation of testing opportunities in light of the potential information revealed and the value of that information to the organization right now.
• What is Data Driven Testing ?
• Testing in which the action of a test case is parameterized by externally defined data values, maintained as a file or spreadsheet. A common technique in Automated Testing.
• What is Conversion Testing ?
• Testing of programs or procedures used to convert data from existing systems for use in replacement systems.
• What is Dependency Testing ?
• Examines an application's requirements for pre-existing software, initial states and configuration in order to maintain proper functionality.
• What is Depth Testing ?
• A test that exercises a feature of a product in full detail.
• What is Dynamic Testing ?
• Testing software through executing it. See also Static Testing.
• What is Endurance Testing ?
• Checks for memory leaks or other problems that may occur with prolonged execution.
• What is End-to-End testing ?
• Testing a complete application environment in a situation that mimics real-world use, such as interacting with a database, using network communications, or interacting with other hardware, applications, or systems if appropriate.
• What is Exhaustive Testing ?
• Testing which covers all combinations of input values and preconditions for an element of the software under test.
• What is Gorilla Testing ?
• Testing one particular module, functionality heavily.
• What is Installation Testing ?
• Confirms that the application under test recovers from expected or unexpected events without loss of data or functionality. Events can include shortage of disk space, unexpected loss of communication, or power out conditions.
• What is Localization Testing ?
• This term refers to making software specifically designed for a specific locality.
• What is Loop Testing ?
• A white box testing technique that exercises program loops.
• What is Mutation Testing ?
• Mutation testing is a method for determining if a set of test data or test cases is useful, by deliberately introducing various code changes ('bugs') and retesting with the original test data/cases to determine if the 'bugs' are detected. Proper implementation requires large computational resources
• What is Monkey Testing ?
• Testing a system or an Application on the fly, i.e just few tests here and there to ensure the system or an application does not crash out.
• What is Positive Testing ?
• Testing aimed at showing software works. Also known as "test to pass". See also Negative Testing.
• What is Negative Testing ?
• Testing aimed at showing software does not work. Also known as "test to fail". See also Positive Testing.
• What is Path Testing ?
• Testing in which all paths in the program source code are tested at least once.
• What is Performance Testing ?
• Testing conducted to evaluate the compliance of a system or component with specified performance requirements. Often this is performed using an automated test tool to simulate large number of users. Also know as "Load Testing".
• What is Ramp Testing ?
• Continuously raising an input signal until the system breaks down.
• What is Recovery Testing ?
• Confirms that the program recovers from expected or unexpected events without loss of data or functionality. Events can include shortage of disk space, unexpected loss of communication, or power out conditions.
• What is the Re-testing testing ?
• Retesting- Again testing the functionality of the application.
• What is the Regression testing ?
• Regression- Check that change in code have not effected the working functionality
• What is Sanity Testing ?
• Brief test of major functional elements of a piece of software to determine if its basically operational.
• What is Scalability Testing ?
• Performance testing focused on ensuring the application under test gracefully handles increases in work load in Normal Condition.
• What is Security Testing ?
• Testing which confirms that the program can restrict access to authorized personnel and that the authorized personnel can access the functions available to their security level.
• What is Stress Testing ?
• Stress testing is a form of testing that is used to determine the stability of a given system or entity. It involves testing beyond normal operational capacity, often to a breaking point, in order to observe the results in Abnormal Condition.
• What is Smoke Testing ?
• A quick-and-dirty test that the major functions of a piece of software work. Originated in the hardware testing practice of turning on a new piece of hardware for the first time and considering it a success if it does not catch on fire.
• What is Soak Testing ?
• Running a system at high load for a prolonged period of time. For example, running several times more transactions in an entire day (or night) than would be expected in a busy day, to identify and performance problems that appear after a large number of transactions have been executed.it means Reliability with load.
• What's the Usability testing ?
• Usability testing is for user friendliness.
• What's the User acceptance testing ?
• User acceptance testing is determining if software is satisfactory to an end-user or customer.
• What's the Volume Testing ?
• We can perform the Volume testing, where the system is subjected to large volume of data.

Test Plan

Test Plan:- A Test Plan is What To Test ? and How To Test? The Test Plan describes the overall approach to development, integration, qualification, and acceptance testing. It describes plans for testing software systems; test environment to be used for the testing; identifies tests to be performed, and provides schedules for test activities. The software Test Plan is used by IT Manager, Test Manager, Documentation Manager, System Administrator, Technical Architect, Development Manager, Project Manager.

The Test Plan is used to perform system testing, subsystem testing, assembly testing, subassembly testing, module testing, user acceptance testing. The Test Plan includes step by step instructions for the various types of testing that will occur during the project life cycle; it also defines the required test equipment, calibration requirements, test facility requirements, and other key factors.

This is a sample of an outline for a test plan. It has been designed for medium to small test projects, and thus is fairly lightweight. It is by necessity general, because each enterprise, each development group, each testing group, and each development project is different. This outline should be used as a set of guidelines for creating your own standard template; add to it or subtract from it as you find appropriate.

Differences in Testing

Difference Between White box and Black Box Testing?

Black box testing - not based on any knowledge of internal design or code. Tests are based on requirements and functionality.

White box testing - based on knowledge of the internal logic of an application's code. Tests are based on coverage of code statements, branches, paths, conditions.

Black-box and white-box are test design methods. Black-box test design treats the system as a “black-box”, so it doesn’t explicitly use knowledge of the internal structure. Black-box test design is usually described as focusing on testing functional requirements. Synonyms for black-box include: behavioral, functional, opaque-box, and closed-box. White-box test design allows one to peek inside the “box”, and it focuses specifically on using internal knowledge of the software to guide the selection of test data. Synonyms for white-box include: structural, glass-box and clear-box. While black-box and white-box are terms that are still in popular use, many people prefer the terms "behavioral" and "structural". Behavioral test design is slightly different from black-box test design because the use of internal knowledge isn't strictly forbidden, but it's still discouraged. In practice, it hasn't proven useful to use a single test design method. One has to use a mixture of different methods so that they aren't hindered by the limitations of a particular one. Some call this "gray-box" or "translucent-box" test design, but others wish we'd stop talking about boxes altogether. It is important to understand that these methods are used during the test design phase, and their influence is hard to see in the tests once they're implemented. Note that any level of testing (unit testing, system testing, etc.) can use any test design methods. Unit testing is usually associated with structural test design, but this is because testers usually don't have well-defined requirements at the unit level to validate .

What are unit, component and integration testing?

Note that the definitions of unit, component, integration, and integration testing are recursive:

Unit. The smallest compilable component. A unit typically is the work of one programmer (At least in principle). As defined, it does not include any called sub-components (for procedural languages) or communicating components in general.

Unit Testing: in unit testing called components (or communicating components) are replaced with stubs, simulators, or trusted components. Calling components are replaced with drivers or trusted super-components. The unit is tested in isolation.

Component: a unit is a component. The integration of one or more components is a component.

Note: The reason for "one or more" as contrasted to "Two or more" is to allow for components that call themselves recursively.

Component testing: same as unit testing except that all stubs and simulators are replaced with the real thing.

Two components (actually one or more) are said to be integrated when:

a. They have been compiled, linked, and loaded together.

b. They have successfully passed the integration tests at the interface between them. Thus, components A and B are integrated to create a new, larger, component (A,B).

Note that this does not conflict with the idea of incremental integration—it just means that A is a big component and B, the component added, is a small one.

Integration testing: carrying out integration tests.

Integration tests (After Leung and White) for procedural languages. This is easily generalized for OO(Object Oriented) languages by using the equivalent constructs for message passing. In the following, the word "call" is to be understood in the most general sense of a data flow and is not restricted to just formal subroutine calls and returns – for example, passage of data through global data structures and/or the use of pointers.

As to the difference between integration testing and system testing. System testing specifically goes after behaviors and bugs that are properties of the entire system as distinct from properties attributable to components (unless, of course, the component in question is the entire system). Examples of system testing issues: Resource loss bugs, throughput bugs, performance, security, recovery, Transaction synchronization bugs (often misnamed "timing bugs").

What's the difference between load and stress testing ?

One of the most common, but unfortunate misuse of terminology is treating “load testing” and “stress testing” as synonymous. The consequence of this ignorant semantic abuse is usually that the system is neither properly “load tested” nor subjected to a meaningful stress test.

Stress testing is subjecting a system to an unreasonable load while denying it the resources (e.g., RAM, disc, MIPS, interrupts, etc.) needed to process that load. The idea is to stress a system to the breaking point in order to find bugs that will make that break potentially harmful. The system is not expected to process the overload without adequate resources, but to behave (e.g., fail) in a decent manner (e.g., not corrupting or losing data). Bugs and failure modes discovered under stress testing may or may not be repaired depending on the application, the failure mode, consequences, etc. The load (incoming transaction stream) in stress testing is often deliberately distorted so as to force the system into resource depletion.

Load testing is subjecting a system to a statistically representative (usually) load. The two main reasons for using such loads are in support of software reliability testing and in performance testing. The term "load testing" by itself is too vague and imprecise to warrant use. For example, do you mean representative load," "overload," "high load," etc. In performance testing, load is varied from a minimum (zero) to the maximum level the system can sustain without running out of resources or having, transactions ,suffer (application-specific) excessive delay.

A third use of the term is as a test whose objective is to determine the maximum sustainable load the system can handle. In this usage, "load testing" is merely testing at the highest transaction arrival rate in performance testing.

What's the difference between QA and testing?

QA is more a preventive thing, ensuring quality in the company and therefore the product rather than just testing the product for software bugs?

TESTING means "quality control"

QUALITY CONTROL measures the quality of a product

QUALITY ASSURANCE measures the quality of processes used to create a quality product.

Testing Interview Question.

• 1. What is Software Testing?
• 2. What is the Purpose of Testing?
• 3. What types of testing do testers perform?
• 4. What is the Outcome of Testing?
• 5. What kind of testing have you done?
• 6. What is the need for testing?
• 7. What are the entry criteria for Functionality and Performance testing?
• 8. What is test metrics?
• 9. Why do you go for White box testing, when Black box testing is available?
• 10. What are the entry criteria for Automation testing?
• 11. When to start and Stop Testing?
• 12. What is Quality?
• 13. What is Baseline document, Can you say any two?
• 14. What is verification?
• 15. What is validation?
• 16. What is quality assurance?
• 17. What is quality control?
• 18. What is SDLC and TDLC?
• 19. What are the Qualities of a Tester?
• 20. When to start and Stop Testing?
• 21. What are the various levels of testing?
• 22. What are the types of testing you know and you experienced?
• 23. What exactly is Heuristic checklist approach for unit testing?
• 24. After completing testing, what would you deliver to the client?
• 25. What is a Test Bed?
• 26. What is a Data Guidelines?
• 27. Why do you go for Test Bed?
• 28. What is Severity and Priority and who will decide what?
• 29. Can Automation testing replace manual testing? If it so, how?
• 30. What is a test case?
• 31. What is a test condition?
• 32. What is the test script?
• 33. What is the test data?
• 34. What is an Inconsistent bug?
• 35. What is the difference between Re-testing and Regression testing?
• 36. What are the different types of testing techniques?
• 37. What are the different types of test case techniques?
• 38. What are the risks involved in testing?
• 39. Differentiate Test bed and Test Environment?
• 40. What ifs the difference between defect, error, bug, failure, fault?
• 41. What is the difference between quality and testing?
• 42. What is the difference between White & Black Box Testing?
• 43. What is the difference between Quality Assurance and Quality Control?
• 44. What is the difference between Testing and debugging?
• 45. What is the difference between bug and defect?
• 46. What is the difference between verification and validation?
• 47. What is the difference between functional spec. and Business requirement specification?
• 48. What is the difference between unit testing and integration testing?
• 49. What is the diff between Volume & Load?
• 50. What is diff between Volume & Stress?
• More Interview Testing Question http://testingsolution.blogspot.com/2006/12/more-testing-interview-question.html

Do Testers Need Programming Skills ?

Do Testers Need Programming Skills ? A Good Tester Friend View.

Many freshers (especially people with Computer Science background) does not take up the first job as QA engineer and the reason they give is that many organizations give preference to people with development skills even while hiring people for testing positions. This raises the question does the testers need to be coders ? Some blogs report that organization like Microsoft hire the coders for test positions because they want to automate everything and eliminate manual testing. Automation is just one part of testing. But testers who understand programming and CS concepts have better analysis skills for testing. Testers with development skills can find the bugs earlier in development cycle and also find the cause for the bug. This also helps them in finding other places in code where there can be similar errors. I, personally feel that people with programming skills always makes better testers. Does this mean all the testers without programming knowledge be fired ?- of course not. Its always an option to have creative people as testers than bad programmers. An organization cannot have all the testers to have programming knowledge as well, with industry facing shortage of quality programmers. Microsoft seems to have found a way out of this by creating two different job profiles SDET and STE. SDET needs to have good programming skills as they are used for automation and debugging. But even this did'nt seem to have solved the problem completely. Can read more about SDET Vs STE here.

SOA- Service Oriented Architecture

software vendors have been creating development and infrastructure products for the latest IT architecture style - Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Recognizing the immense value SOA can bring to IT, companies like BEA, IBM, and Microsoft have delivered products to help customers design and build SOA-based applications. These vendor-driven initiatives are beginning to sprout actual customer-developed applications that are built on the promise of SOA, such as better flexibility, agility and reuse.

A challenge facing many organizations is how to quickly and effectively react to frequent changes in business requirements, whilst improving productivity and reducing costs. To achieve this, you need a flexible infrastructure that can meet the demands of a changing marketplace and seize emerging opportunities. To address this challenge, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) promotes an architectural approach that replaces rigid proprietary systems with heterogeneous, "loosely-coupled" services. The Service Component Architecture (SCA), along with Service Data Objects (SDO), makes this architectural concept a reality and provides the programming model to build SOA solutions for agile businesses.

Some QTP Related Question Answers

• Full form of QTP ?
• Quick Test Professional
• What's the QTP ?
• QTP is Mercury Interactive Functional Testing Tool.
• Which scripting language used by QTP ?
• QTP uses VB scripting.
• What's the basic concept of QTP ?
• QTP is based on two concept-
• * Recording
• * Playback
• How many types of recording facility are available in QTP ?
• QTP provides three types of recording methods-
• * Context Recording (Normal)
• * Analog Recording
• * Low Level Recording
• How many types of Parameters are available in QTP ?
• QTP provides three types of Parameter-
• * Method Argument
• * Data Driven
• * Dynamic
• What's the QTP testing process ?
• QTP testing process consist of seven steps-
• * Preparing to recoding
• * Recording
• * Enhancing your script
• * Debugging
• * Run
• * Analyze
• * Report
• DefectsWhat's the Active Screen ?
• It provides the snapshots of your application as it appeared when you performed a certain steps during recording session.
• What's the Test Pane ?
• Test Pane contains Tree View and Expert View tabs.
• What's Data Table ?
• It assists to you about parameterizing the test.
• What's the Test Tree ?
• It provides graphical representation of your operations which you have performed with your application.
• Which all environment QTP supports ?
• ERP/ CRM /Java/ J2EE/ VB, .NET ,Multimedia, XML Web Objects, ActiveX controls ,SAP, Oracle, Siebel, PeopleSoft Web Services, Terminal EmulatorIE, NN, AOL .
• How can you view the Test Tree ?
• The Test Tree is displayed through Tree View tab.
• What's the Expert View ?
• Expert View display the Test Script.
• Which keyword used for Normal Recording ?
• F3
• Which keyword used for run the test script ?
• F5
• Which keyword used for stop the recording ?
• F4
• Which keyword used for Analog Recording ?
• Ctrl+Shift+F4
• Which keyword used for Low Level Recording ?
• Ctrl+Shift+F3
• Which keyword used for switch between Tree View and Expert View ?
• Ctrl+Tab
• What's the Transaction ?
• You can measure how long it takes to run a section of your test by defining transactions.
• Where you can view the results of the checkpoint ?
• You can view the results of the checkpoints in the Test Result Window.
• What's the Standard Checkpoint ?
• Standard Checkpoints checks the property value of an object in your application or web page.
• Which environment are supported by Standard Checkpoint ?
• Standard Checkpoint are supported for all add-in environments.
• What's the Image Checkpoint ?
• Image Checkpoint check the value of an image in your application or web page.
• Which environments are supported by Image Checkpoint ?
• Image Checkpoint are supported only Web environment.
• What's the Bitmap Checkpoint ?
• Bitmap Checkpoint checks the bitmap images in your web page or application.
• Which enviornment are supported by Bitmap Checkpoints ?
• Bitmap checkpoints are supported all add-in environment.
• What's the Table Checkpoints ?
• Table Checkpoint checks the information with in a table.
• Which environments are supported by Table Checkpoint ?
• Table Checkpoints are supported only ActiveX environment.
• What's the Text Checkpoint ?
• Text Checkpoint checks that a test string is displayed in the appropriate place in your application or on web page.
• Which environment are supported by Test Checkpoint ?
• Text Checkpoint are supported all add-in environments Note:
• * QTP records each steps you perform and generates a test tree and test script.
• * QTP records in normal recording mode.
• * If you are creating a test on web object, you can record your test on one browser and run it on another browser.
• * Analog Recording and Low Level Recording require more disk sapce than normal recording mode.

Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMM) Maturity Levels

Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMM) Maturity Levels
The Five Maturity Levels described by the Capability Maturity Model can be characterized as per their primary process changes made at each level as follows:

1) Initial The software process is characterized as ad hoc, and occasionally even chaotic. Few processes are defined, and success depends on individual effort and heroics.
2) Repeatable Basic project management processes are established to track cost, schedule, and functionality. The necessary process discipline is in place to repeat earlier successes on projects with similar applications.
3) Defined The software process for both management and engineering activities is documented, standardized, and integrated into a standard software process for the organization. All projects use an approved, tailored version of the organization's standard software process for developing and maintaining software.
4) Managed Detailed measures of the software process and product quality are collected. Both the software process and products are quantitatively understood and controlled.
5) Optimizing Continuous process improvement is enabled by quantitative feedback from the process and from piloting innovative ideas and technologies.

CMM-Capability Maturity Model

Capability Maturity Model:The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a methodology used to develop and refine an organization's software development process. The model describes a five-level evolutionary path of increasingly organized and systematically more mature processes. CMM was developed and is promoted by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), a research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). SEI was founded in 1984 to address software engineering issues and, in a broad sense, to advance software engineering methodologies. More specifically, SEI was established to optimize the process of developing, acquiring, and maintaining heavily software-reliant systems for the DoD. Because the processes involved are equally applicable to the software industry as a whole, SEI advocates industry-wide adoption of the CMM.
The CMM is similar to ISO 9001, one of the ISO 9000 series of standards specified by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The ISO 9000 standards specify an effective quality system for manufacturing and service industries; ISO 9001 deals specifically with software development and maintenance. The main difference between the two systems lies in their respective purposes: ISO 9001 specifies a minimal acceptable quality level for software processes, while the CMM establishes a framework for continuous process improvement and is more explicit than the ISO standard in defining the means to be employed to that end.

What is CMM (SEI Capability Maturity Model)? The Capability Maturity Model for Software (CMM) is a framework that describes the key elements of an effective software process. There are CMMs for non software processes as well, such as Business Process Management (BPM). The CMM describes an evolutionary improvement path from an ad hoc, immature process to a mature, disciplined process. The CMM covers practices for planning, engineering, and managing software development and maintenance. When followed, these key practices improve the ability of organizations to meet goals for cost, schedule, functionality, and product quality. The CMM establishes a yardstick against which it is possible to judge, in a repeatable way, the maturity of an organization's software process and compare it to the state of the practice of the industry. The CMM can also be used by an organization to plan improvements to its software process. It also reflects the needs of individuals performing software process, improvement, software process assessments, or software capability evaluations; is documented; and is publicly available.

Unit & Integration Testing

Unit Testing

In computer programming, a unit test is a method of testing the correctness of a particular module of source code.

The idea is to write test cases for every non-trivial function or method in the module so that each test case is separate from the others if possible. This type of testing is mostly done by the developers.

Benefits

The goal of unit testing is to isolate each part of the program and show that the individual parts are correct. It provides a written contract that the piece must satisfy. This isolated testing provides four main benefits:

Encourages change

Unit testing allows the programmer to refactor code at a later date, and make sure the module still works correctly (regression testing). This provides the benefit of encouraging programmers to make changes to the code since it is easy for the programmer to check if the piece is still working properly.

Simplifies Integration

Unit testing helps eliminate uncertainty in the pieces themselves and can be used in a bottom-up testing style approach. By testing the parts of a program first and then testing the sum of its parts will make integration testing easier.

Documents the code

Unit testing provides a sort of "living document" for the class being tested. Clients looking to learn how to use the class can look at the unit tests to determine how to use the class to fit their needs.

Separation of Interface from Implementation

Because some classes may have references to other classes, testing a class can frequently spill over into testing another class. A common example of this is classes that depend on a database; in order to test the class, the tester finds herself writing code that interacts with the database. This is a mistake, because a unit test should never go outside of its own class boundary. As a result, the software developer abstracts an interface around the database connection, and then implements that interface with their own Mock Object. This results in loosely coupled code, thus minimizing dependencies in the system.

Limitations

It is important to realize that unit-testing will not catch every error in the program. By definition, it only tests the functionality of the units themselves. Therefore, it will not catch integration errors, performance problems and any other system-wide issues. In addition, it may not be trivial to anticipate all special cases of input the program unit under study may receive in reality. Unit testing is only effective if it is used in conjunction with other software testing activities.

Integration Testing

It is the phase of software testing in which individual software modules are combined and tested as a group. It follows unit testing and precedes system testing. takes as its input modules that have been checked out by unit testing, groups them in larger aggregates, applies tests defined in an Integration test plan to those aggregates, and delivers as its output the integrated system ready for system testing.

Purpose

The purpose of Integration testing is to verify functional, performance and reliability requirements placed on major design items. These "design items", i.e. assemblages (or groups of units), are exercised through their interfaces using Black box testing, success and error cases being simulated via appropriate parameter and data inputs. Simulated usage of shared data areas and inter-process communication is tested, individual subsystems are exercised through their input interface. All test cases are constructed to test that all components within assemblages interact correctly, for example, across procedure calls or process activations.

The overall idea, is the "building block" approach in which verified assemblages are added to a verified base which is then used to support the Integration testing of further assemblages.

White Box and Black Box Testing

White Box Testing
Testing of a function with knowing internal structure of the program. Also known as glass box, structural, clear box and open box testing. A software testing technique whereby explicit knowledge of the internal workings of the item being tested are used to select the test data. Unlike black box testing, white box testing uses specific knowledge of programming code to examine outputs. The test is accurate only if the tester knows what the program is supposed to do. He or she can then see if the program diverges from its intended goal. White box testing does not account for errors caused by omission, and all visible code must also be readable.
Black Box Testing
Testing of a function without knowing internal structure of the program. Black-box and white-box are test design methods. Black-box test design treats the system as a "black-box", so it doesn't explicitly use knowledge of the internal structure. Black-box test design is usually described as focusing on testing functional requirements. Synonyms for black-box include: behavioral, functional, opaque-box, and closed-box. White-box test design allows one to peek inside the "box", and it focuses specifically on using internal knowledge of the software to guide the selection of test data. Synonyms for white-box include: structural, glass-box and clear-box.

While black-box and white-box are terms that are still in popular use, many people prefer the terms "behavioral" and "structural". Behavioral test design is slightly different from black-box test design because the use of internal knowledge isn't strictly forbidden, but it's still discouraged. In practice, it hasn't proven useful to use a single test design method. One has to use a mixture of different methods so that they aren't hindered by the limitations of a particular one. Some call this "gray-box" or "translucent-box" test design, but others wish we'd stop talking about boxes altogether.

It is important to understand that these methods are used during the test design phase, and their influence is hard to see in the tests once they're implemented. Note that any level of testing (unit testing, system testing, etc.) can use any test design methods. Unit testing is usually associated with structural test design, but this is because testers usually don't have well-defined requirements at the unit level to validate.

Interview Questions

Interview Question Answer By Testing Expert- Dr K.V.V.K. Prasad

Testing Scenarios :

Q: How do you know that all the scenarios for testing are covered? By using the Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM) we can ensure that we have covered all the functionalities in Test Coverage. RTM is a document that traces User Requirements from analysis through implementations. RTm can be used as a completeness check to verify that all the requirements are present or that there is no unnecessary/extra features and as a maintenance guide to new personnel. We can use the simple format in Excel sheet where we map the Functionality with the Test case ID. 2. Complete Testing with Time Constraints :

Question: How do you complete the testing when you have a time constraint? If i am doinf regression testing and i do not have sufficient time then we have to see for which sort of regression testing i have to go 1)unit regression testing 2)Regional Regression testing 3)Full Regression testing. 3. Given an yahoo application how many test cases u can write? First we need requirements of the yahoo applicaiton. I think test cases are written aganist given requirements.So for any working webapplication or new application, requirements are needed to prepare testcases.The number of testcases depends on the requirements of the application Note to learners : A Test Engineer must have knowledge on SDLC. I suggest learners to take any one exiting application and start pratice from writing requirements. 4. Lets say we have an GUI map and scripts, a we got some 5 new pages included inan application how do we do that? By integration testing. 5. GUI contains 2 fields Field 1 to accept the value of x and Field 2 displays the result of the formula a+b/c-d where a= 0.4*x, b=1.5*a, c=x, d=2.5*b; How many system test cases would you write GUI contains 2 fields Field 1 to accept the value of x and Field 2 displays the result so that there is only one testcase to write

Quality Related Questions

• 1. Quality means
• a) conformance to requirements
• b) meeting customer needs
• c) both
• d) none
• 2. AQL stands for
• a)Allowable Quality Level
• b)Allocated Quality Level
• c) Acceptable Quality Level
• d) Allowed Quality Level
• 3. For quality to happen, there must be well-defined standards and procedures which are followed. (True/False)
• 4. Many technical personnel believe that standards inhibit their creativity. (True/False)
• 5. Achieving quality (defect-free products and servcices) is easy. (True/False)
• 6. The challenge of making quality happen is
• a)a miniscule challenge
• b)a monumental challenge
• 7. Accomplishing quality requires "a thought revolution by management.". Who stated as above?
• a)Dr. Malcolm Baldrige
• b)Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa
• c)Bill Gates
• d)William J Clinton
• 8. Taylor approach refers to
• a) Engineers create work standards and specifications. Workers merely follow.
• b) Engineers create work standards and specifictions. Both engineers and workers follow.
• c) Engineers create work standards and specifications and follow them.
• 9. In Zero defect movement all responsibilities and defects are borne by the workers.
• (True/False)
• 10. The word "kick-off" is used in
• a)Zero Defect Movement
• b)Deming's Circle
• c)QAI's Quality Improvement Model
• 11. Dr. W. Edwards Deming has stated that it takes ____________ years to change a culture from an emphasis on productivity to an emphasis on quality.
• (10 years/20 years/2 to 5 years/none of these)
• 12. Quality means meeting requirements. This is ____________view.
• (producer's /customer's )
• 13. Quality means fit for use. This is ________________view.
• (producer's /customer's )
• 14. Which one of the following definitions of quality is more important.
• a)Quality means meeting requirements.
• b)Quality means fit for use.
• 15. Quality control is a ______________ function. (line/staff)
• 16. Quality assurance is a ____________ function. (line/staff)
• 17. By what other two names is PDCA process referred to?
• 18. What does "Going Around the PDCA Circle" connote?
• 19. The no of principles in Dr. W. Edwards Deming's quality principles is ____________. (8/10/12/14/16)
• 20. For quality to happen it is not necessary that all the Deming's principles are used concurrently. (True/False)
• Hi Friends Try To Find Answers give answer in Next Post.

Levels of testing

Levels of testing We divide Testing In Four Level,Unit Testing,Integration Testing, System Testing and Acceptance Testing.

Unit testing:-
Generally the code which is generated is compiled. The unit test is white box oriented and the steps can be conducted in parallel for multiple components.

1. The module Interface is tested to ensure that information properly flows into and out of the program unit under test.
2. The local data structure is examined to ensure that data stored temporarily maintains its integrity during all steps in an algorithm’s execution.
3. Boundary conditions are tested to ensure that the module operates properly at boundaries established to limit and restrict processing.
4. All the statements are executed at least once and error handling paths are tested
Integration testing:-
Integration testing is a systematic technique for constructing the program structure .After Performing Unit Testing perform integration testing. you have like
Top down :-Top down integration testing with the main routine and one or two immediate subordinate routines in the system structure it is good to have modules are integrated as they are developed, top level interfaces are tested first.
Bottom up :-Bottom up integration testing is the traditional strategy used to integrate the components of a software system into a functioning whole
Regressive testing:- Retesting the already test modules and adding new modules .Regressive testing is an important strategy for reducing side effects.
System Level Testing :

System Testing is third level of Testing In this level we check Functionility of application.

Performance testing: - Performance testing is designed to test the run time performance of software or hardware.
Recovery testing :- is a system test forces the software to fail in a variety of ways and verifies that recovery is properly performed .if recovery is automatic, re initialization , check pointing ,data recovery and restart are evaluated for correctness.
Security Testing: - Security testing attempts to verify that protection mechanisms built into a system will in fact, protect it from improper penetration.

Acceptance Testing:- When customer software is built for one customer, a series of acceptance tests are conducted to enable the customer to validate all requirements. conducted by the end user rather than software engineers, an acceptance test can range from an informal test drive to a planned and systematically executed series of tests. If software is developed as a product to be used by many customers, it is impractical to perform acceptance tests with each one. Most software product builders use a process called alpha and beta testing to uncover errors that only the end user seems able to find .