Planet Earth Central

There are various phases in software development life cycle (SDLC).Software testing is one of the most essential stages. A variety of testing methods are used beginning with the application’s development until it gets the marketing stage. These methods are employed during various stages of the SDLC. In addition, all the different versions of the software have to be tested before they are delivered to either the costumer or the target market.

There are many different classes of software and software for web applications is one of them. The importance of this type of software has increased rapidly since the arrival of the Internet. Because of the high impact Internet has on our daily lives any web software is carefully tested before launching in order to reduce the associated security risks that originate from the use of the Internet.

Even though the testing of web software is vital, there is at all times rush in building and testing those application due to time constraints. The different types of tests can be grouped in code testing, load testing, compatibility testing, functional testing and regression testing.

The web software is usually released using a pattern of software release known as alpha/beta testing.This is a simulated or actual operational test conducted by potential users or an independent test team at the developers’ site. Because during alpha testing the software is actually still being developed only small modules of the software are tested during this stage. When of-the-self software is employed, alpha testing is often used as an internal acceptance test. After being alpha tested software will only be released when all the main functional sections have been both coded and tested.

After the alpha testing is completed the software is permitted to undergo the beta phase of testing. In beta testing the web software I completely built. The software is made available for use to a restricted number of customers intended for software testing previous to the official release. The alpha/beta testing method is not the standard procedure when testing web site design. This is because HTML coding makes it very easy to design independent web pages that can afterwards being easily integrated so the design team can code and test each page independently.

Code testing refers to the process where the testing or development engineer verifies the code and make sure that there are no software bugs. Web development is a very rapid process so the abscence of bugs is required. Paired-programming is one of the favourite methods that highly qualified testers can use to produce bug free coding.

Two coders working at a single workstation it is at the core of paired programming. One programmer types in the code when the other person observes and reviews each line at the same time. Support for this methodology is provided by some research data produced by Laurie Williams at University of Utah in Salt Lake City. According to this research paired programmers produce code with 15% less bugs while only being 15% slower than individual programmers.

The fact that the software is tested many times during the development process should provide a bug free software by the end of it. Load testing is done to see at what point the application fails or the performance reduces when under heavy loads such as multiple users on or heavy server traffic. Load testing will provide information regarding the amount of users that could connect simustaneosly to a site, the number of transactions that the system can cope at the same time and its responsiveness under different circumstances or amount of traffic.

The testing done to estimate the compatibility of the application with the different interacting hardware of software is the Compatibility testing. This method tests how good the software is in interactions with operating system, peripherals, database, browser etc. It also tests the computing capacity of the hardware platform and the peripherals.

The testing used to validate the conformance to specifications and requirements is the Functional testing. This testing involves performing a sequence of tests to validate the behavior of the software, feature by feature using a large number of normal and abnormal data. The Regression testing the type of testing done to make sure that improvement, defect corrections or any additional changes to the software has not broken down any existing functionality.

Regression testing is an important testing method when the software development method is iterative. Iterative software development is a method in which new functionality is added to existing software. In this case one should make sure that the new addition has not affected any of the existing functionality. Regression testing is done to find out any of such instances. The above mentioned methods are essential tests to complete the web software testing.