Category: Software Testing Dictionary

Acceptance Test: – Formal tests (often performed by a customer) to determine whether or not a system has satisfied predetermined acceptance criteria. These tests are often used to enable the customer (either internal or external) to determine whether or not to accept a system. Ad Hoc Testing: – Testing carried out using no recognized test case design technique. [BCS]   Alpha Testing: – Testing of a software product or system conducted at the developer’s site by the customer.   Artistic Testing: – Also known as Exploratory testing.   Assertion Testing. (NBS)A dynamic analysis technique that inserts assertions about the relationship…

  Failure: A failure is a deviation from expectations exhibited by software and observed as a set of symptoms by a tester or user. A failure is caused by one or more defects. The Causal Trail. A person makes an error that causes a defect that causes a failure.[Robert M. Poston, 1996]   Fix testing. Rerunning of a test that previously found the bug in order to see if a supplied fix works. [Scott Loveland, 2005]   Follow-up testing, we vary a test that yielded a less-than-spectacular failure. We vary the operation, data, or environment, asking whether the underlying fault in the…

    End-to-End testing. Similar to system testing; the ‘macro’ end of the test scale; involves 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.   Equivalence Partitioning: An approach where classes of inputs are categorized for product or function validation. This usually does not include combinations of input, but rather a single state value-based by class. For example, with a given function there may be several classes of input that may be used for positive testing. If…

  Data-Driven testing An automation approach in which the navigation and functionality of the test script is directed through external data; this approach separates test and control data from the test script. [Daniel J. Mosley, 2002]   Data flow testing Testing in which test cases are designed based on variable usage within the code.[BCS]   Database testing. Check the integrity of database field values. [William E. Lewis, 2000]   Defect The difference between the functional specification (including user documentation) and actual program text (source code and data). Often reported as a problem and stored in defect-tracking and problem-management system   Defect Also called a…