Software techniques

Software testing
Software testing is an investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about
the quality of the product or service under test. Software testing can also provide an objective,
independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks
of software implementation. Test techniques include, but are not limited to, the process of
executing a program or application with the intent of finding software bugs (errors or other
defects).
Software testing can be stated as the process of validating and verifying that a software
program/application/product:
1.meets the requirements that guided its design and development;
2.works as expected; and
3.can be implemented with the same characteristics.
Software testing, depending on the testing method employed, can be implemented at any time
in the development process. However, most of the test effort occurs after the requirements
have been defined and the coding process has been completed. As such, the methodology of
the test is governed by the software development methodology adopted.
Different software development models will focus the test effort at different points in the
development process. Newer development models, such as Agile, often employ test driven
development and place an increased portion of the testing in the hands of the developer, before
it reaches a formal team of testers. In a more traditional model, most of the test execution
occurs after the requirements have been defined and the coding process has been completed.

[ edit] Overview
Testing can never completely identify all the defects within software. Instead, it
furnishes a criticism or comparison that compares the state and behavior of the
product against oracles—principles or mechanisms by which someone might recognize
a problem. These oracles may include (but are not limited to) specifications, contracts,
comparable products, past versions of the same product, inferences about intended or
expected purpose, user or customer expectations, relevant standards, applicable laws,
or other criteria.
Every software product has a target audience. For example, the audience for video
game software is completely different from banking software. Therefore, when an
organization develops or otherwise invests in a software product, it can assess
whether the software product will be acceptable to its end users, its target audience,
its purchasers, and other stakeholders. Software testing is the process of attempting
to make this assessment.
A study conducted by NIST in 2002 reports that software bugs cost the U.S. economy
$59.5 billion annually. More than a third of this cost could be avoided if better
software testing was performed.

[edit] History
The separation of debugging from testing was initially introduced by
Glenford J. Myers in 1979.Although his attention was on breakage
testing ("a successful test is one that finds a bug") it illustrated the
desire of the software engineering community to separate fundamental
development activities, such as debugging, from that of verification.
Dave Gelperin and William C. Hetzel classified in 1988 the phases and
goals in software testing in the following stages:
•Until 1956 - Debugging oriented
•1957–1978 - Demonstration oriented
•1979–1982 - Destruction oriented
•1983–1987 - Evaluation oriented
•1988–2000 - Prevention oriented

Software testing topics
Scope
A primary purpose of testing is to detect software failures so that
defects may be discovered and corrected. Testing cannot establish that a
product functions properly under all conditions but can only establish
that it does not function properly under specific conditions. The scope
of software testing often includes examination of code as well as
execution of that code in various environments and conditions as well as
examining the aspects of code: does it do what it is supposed to do and
do what it needs to do. In the current culture of software development,
a testing organization may be separate from the development team.
There are various roles for testing team members. Information derived
from software testing may be used to correct the process by which
software is developed.

[edit] Functional vs. non-functional testing
Functional testing refers to activities that verify a specific action or function of the code. These
are usually found in the code requirements documentation, although some development
methodologies work from use cases or user stories. Functional tests tend to answer the
question of "can the user do this" or "does this particular feature work."
Non-functional testing refers to aspects of the software that may not be related to a specific
function or user action, such as scalability or other performance, behavior under certain
constraints, or security. Non-functional requirements tend to be those that reflect the quality of
the product, particularly in the context of the suitability perspective of its users.
[edit] Defects and failures
Not all software defects are caused by coding errors. One common source of expensive defects
is caused by requirement gaps, e.g., unrecognized requirements, that result in errors of omission
by the program designer.[15] A common source of requirements gaps is non-functional
requirements such as testability, scalability, maintainability, usability, performance, and security.
Software faults occur through the following processes. A programmer makes an error (mistake),
which results in a defect (fault, bug) in the software source code. If this defect is executed, in
certain situations the system will produce wrong results, causing a failure.[16] Not all defects will
necessarily result in failures. For example, defects in dead code will never result in failures. A
defect can turn into a failure when the environment is changed. Examples of these changes in
environment include the software being run on a new computer hardware platform, alterations
in source data or interacting with different software.[16] A single defect may result in a wide
range of failure symptoms.

Finding faults early
It is commonly believed that the earlier a defect is found the cheaper it is to fix it. The
following table shows the cost of fixing the defect depending on the stage it was
found. For example, if a problem in the requirements is found only post-release, then
it would cost 10–100 times more to fix than if it had already been found by the
requirements review. Modern continuous deployment practices, and cloud-based
services may cost less for re-deployment and maintenance than in the past.
Compatibility
A common cause of software failure (real or perceived) is a lack of this compatibility
with other application software, operating systems (or operating system versions, old
or new), or target environments that differ greatly from the original (such as a terminal
or GUI application intended to be run on the desktop now being required to become a
web application, which must render in a web browser). For example, in the case of a
lack of backward compatibility, this can occur because the programmers develop and
test software only on the latest version of the target environment, which not all users
may be running. This results in the unintended consequence that the latest work may
not function on earlier versions of the target environment, or on older hardware that
earlier versions of the target environment was capable of using. Sometimes such
issues can be fixed by proactively abstracting operating system functionality into a
separate program module or library.

Time detected

Cost to fix a defect
Requirements Architecture Construction System test Post-release

Requirements 1× 3× 5–10× 10× 10–100×

Time
Architecture - 1× 10× 15× 25–100×
introduced

Construction - - 1× 10× 10–25×

Input combinations and preconditions
A very fundamental problem with software testing is that testing under all
combinations of inputs and preconditions (initial state) is not feasible, even with a
simple product. This means that the number of defects in a software product can be
very large and defects that occur infrequently are difficult to find in testing. More
significantly, non-functional dimensions of quality (how it is supposed to be versus
what it is supposed to do)—usability, scalability, performance, compatibility,
reliability—can be highly subjective; something that constitutes sufficient value to one
person may be intolerable to another.
Static vs. dynamic testing
There are many approaches to software testing. Reviews, walkthroughs, or inspections
are considered as static testing, whereas actually executing programmed code with a
given set of test cases is referred to as dynamic testing. Static testing can be (and
unfortunately in practice often is) omitted. Dynamic testing takes place when the
program itself is used for the first time (which is generally considered the beginning of
the testing stage). Dynamic testing may begin before the program is 100% complete in
order to test particular sections of code (modules or discrete functions). Typical
techniques for this are either using stubs/drivers or execution from a debugger
environment. For example, spreadsheet programs are, by their very nature, tested to a
large extent interactively ("on the fly"), with results displayed immediately after each
calculation or text manipulation.

Software verification and validation
Software testing is used in association with verification and validation:
•Verification: Have we built the software right? (i.e., does it match the specification).
•Validation: Have we built the right software? (i.e., is this what the customer wants).
The terms verification and validation are commonly used interchangeably in the
industry; it is also common to see these two terms incorrectly defined. According to
the IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology:
Verification is the process of evaluating a system or component to determine whether
the products of a given development phase satisfy the conditions imposed at the start
of that phase.
Validation is the process of evaluating a system or component during or at the end of
the development process to determine whether it satisfies specified requirements.
According to the IS0 9000 standard:
Verification is confirmation by examination and through provision of objective
evidence that specified requirements have been fulfilled.
Validation is confirmation by examination and through provision of objective evidence
that the requirements for a specific intended use or application have been fulfilled.

Software quality assurance (SQA)
Though controversial, software testing is a part of the software quality
assurance (SQA) process. In SQA, software process specialists and
auditors are concerned for the software development process rather
than just the artifacts such as documentation, code and systems. They
examine and change the software engineering process itself to reduce
the amount of faults that end up in the delivered software: the so-called
defect rate.
What constitutes an "acceptable defect rate" depends on the nature of
the software; A flight simulator video game would have much higher
defect tolerance than software for an actual airplane.
Although there are close links with SQA, testing departments often exist
independently, and there may be no SQA function in some companies.
Software testing is a task intended to detect defects in software by
contrasting a computer program's expected results with its actual
results for a given set of inputs. By contrast, QA (quality assurance) is
the implementation of policies and procedures intended to prevent
defects from occurring in the first place.

The software testing team
Software testing can be done by software testers.
Until the 1980s the term "software tester" was used
generally, but later it was also seen as a separate
profession. Regarding the periods and the different
goals in software testing, different roles have been
established: manager, test lead, test designer, tester,
automation developer, and test administrator.

Testing methods
The box approach
Software testing methods are traditionally divided
into white- and black-box testing. These two
approaches are used to describe the point of view
that a test engineer takes when designing test cases.
White-box testing
Main article: White-box testing
White-box testing is when the tester has access
to the internal data structures and algorithms
including the code that implement these

Types of white-box testing
The following types of white-box testing exist:
•API testing (application programming interface) - testing of
the application using public and private APIs
•Code coverage - creating tests to satisfy some criteria of
code coverage (e.g., the test designer can create tests to
cause all statements in the program to be executed at least
once)
•Fault injection methods - improving the coverage of a test by
introducing faults to test code paths
•Mutation testing methods
•Static testing - All types

Test coverage
White-box testing methods can also be used to evaluate the
completeness of a test suite that was created with black-box testing
methods. This allows the software team to examine parts of a system
that are rarely tested and ensures that the most important function
points have been tested.
Two common forms of code coverage are:
•Function coverage, which reports on functions executed
•Statement coverage, which reports on the number of lines executed to
complete the test
They both return a code coverage metric, measured as a
percentage

Black-box testing
Black-box testing treats the software as a "black box"—without any
knowledge of internal implementation. Black-box testing methods
include: equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, all-pairs
testing, fuzz testing, model-based testing, exploratory testing and
specification-based testing.
Specification-based testing: Specification-based testing aims to test the
functionality of software according to the applicable requirements.[22]
Thus, the tester inputs data into, and only sees the output from, the test
object. This level of testing usually requires thorough test cases to be
provided to the tester, who then can simply verify that for a given input,
the output value (or behavior), either "is" or "is not" the same as the
expected value specified in the test case.
Specification-based testing is necessary, but it is insufficient to guard
against certain risks.

Advantages and disadvantages: The black-box tester has no "bonds"
with the code, and a tester's perception is very simple: a code must
have bugs. Using the principle, "Ask and you shall receive," black-box
testers find bugs where programmers do not. On the other hand, black-
box testing has been said to be "like a walk in a dark labyrinth without a
flashlight," because the tester doesn't know how the software being
tested was actually constructed. As a result, there are situations when
(1) a tester writes many test cases to check something that could have
been tested by only one test case, and/or (2) some parts of the back-
end are not tested at all.
Therefore, black-box testing has the advantage of "an unaffiliated
opinion", on the one hand, and the disadvantage of "blind exploring",
on the other.

Grey-box testing
Grey-box testing (American spelling: gray-box testing) involves having
knowledge of internal data structures and algorithms for purposes of
designing tests, while executing those tests at the user, or black-box
level. The tester is not required to have a full access to the software's
source code. Manipulating input data and formatting output do not
qualify as grey-box, because the input and output are clearly outside of
the "black box" that we are calling the system under test. This
distinction is particularly important when conducting integration testing
between two modules of code written by two different developers,
where only the interfaces are exposed for test. However, modifying a
data repository does qualify as grey-box, as the user would not normally
be able to change the data outside of the system under test. Grey-box
testing may also include reverse engineering to determine, for instance,
boundary values or error messages.

By knowing the underlying concepts of how the software works, the
tester makes better-informed testing choices while testing the
software from outside. Typically, a grey-box tester will be permitted to
set up his testing environment; for instance, seeding a database; and
the tester can observe the state of the product being tested after
performing certain actions. For instance, in testing a database product
he/she may fire an SQL query on the database and then observe the
database, to ensure that the expected changes have been reflected.
Grey-box testing implements intelligent test scenarios, based on
limited information. This will particularly apply to data type handling,
exception handling, and so on.

Visual testing
The aim of visual testing is to provide developers with the ability to examine what was
happening at the point of software failure by presenting the data in such a way that
the developer can easily and the information he requires, and the information is
expressed clearly.
At the core of visual testing is the idea that showing someone a problem (or a test
failure), rather than just describing it, greatly increases clarity and understanding.
Visual testing therefore requires the recording of the entire test process – capturing
everything that occurs on the test system in video format. Output videos are
supplemented by real-time tester input via picture-in-a-picture webcam and audio
commentary from microphones.
Visual testing provides a number of advantages. The quality of communication
is increased dramatically because testers can show the problem (and the
events leading up to it) to the developer as opposed to just describing it and the
need to replicate test failures will cease to exist in many cases. The developer
will have all the evidence he requires of a test failure and can instead focus on
the cause of the fault and how it should be fixed

Visual testing is particularly well-suited for environments that deploy
agile methods in their development of software, since agile methods
require greater communication between testers and developers and
collaboration within small teams.
Ad hoc testing and exploratory testing are important methodologies for
checking software integrity, because they require less preparation time
to implement, whilst important bugs can be found quickly. In ad hoc
testing, where testing takes place in an improvised, impromptu way, the
ability of a test tool to visually record everything that occurs on a system
becomes very important.
Visual testing is gathering recognition in customer acceptance and
usability testing, because the test can be used by many
individuals involved in the development process. For the
customer, it becomes easy to provide detailed bug reports and
feedback, and for program users, visual testing can record user
actions on screen, as well as their voice and image, to provide a
complete picture at the time of software failure for the developer

Testing levels
Tests are frequently grouped by where they are added
in the software development process, or by the level
of specificity of the test. The main levels during the
development process as defined by the SWEBOK
guide are unit-, integration-, and system testing that
are distinguished by the test target without implying a
specific process model. Other test levels are classified
by the testing objective.

Unit testing
Main article: Unit testing
Unit testing, also known as component testing, refers to tests that verify
the functionality of a specific section of code, usually at the function
level. In an object-oriented environment, this is usually at the class level,
and the minimal unit tests include the constructors and destructors.
These types of tests are usually written by developers as they work on
code (white-box style), to ensure that the specific function is working as
expected. One function might have multiple tests, to catch corner cases
or other branches in the code. Unit testing alone cannot verify the
functionality of a piece of software, but rather is used to assure that the
building blocks the software uses work independently of each other.

Integration testing
Main article: Integration testing
Integration testing is any type of software testing that seeks to verify the
interfaces between components against a software design. Software
components may be integrated in an iterative way or all together ("big
bang"). Normally the former is considered a better practice since it
allows interface issues to be localized more quickly and fixed.
Integration testing works to expose defects in the interfaces and
interaction between integrated components (modules). Progressively
larger groups of tested software components corresponding to elements
of the architectural design are integrated and tested until the software
works as a system.

System testing
Main article: System testing
System testing tests a completely integrated system to verify
that it meets its requirements.
System integration testing
Main article: System integration testing
System integration testing verifies that a system is integrated
to any external or third-party systems defined in the system
requirements.[citation needed]

Objectives of testing
[edit] Regression testing
Main article: Regression testing
Regression testing focuses on finding defects after a major code change
has occurred. Specifically, it seeks to uncover software regressions, or
old bugs that have come back. Such regressions occur whenever
software functionality that was previously working correctly stops
working as intended. Typically, regressions occur as an unintended
consequence of program changes, when the newly developed part of
the software collides with the previously existing code. Common
methods of regression testing include re-running previously run tests
and checking whether previously fixed faults have re-emerged. The
depth of testing depends on the phase in the release process and the
risk of the added features. They can either be complete, for changes
added late in the release or deemed to be risky, to very shallow,
consisting of positive tests on each feature, if the changes are early in
the release or deemed to be of low risk.

Acceptance testing
Main article: Acceptance testing
Acceptance testing can mean one of two things:
1.A smoke test is used as an acceptance test prior to
introducing a new build to the main testing process, i.e.
before integration or regression.
2.Acceptance testing performed by the customer, often in
their lab environment on their own hardware, is known as
user acceptance testing (UAT). Acceptance testing may be
performed as part of the hand-off process between any two
phases of development.

Alpha testing
Alpha testing is simulated or actual operational testing by potential
users/customers or an independent test team at the developers' site.
Alpha testing is often employed for off-the-shelf software as a form of
internal acceptance testing, before the software goes to beta testing.[33]
Beta testing
Beta testing comes after alpha testing and can be considered a
form of external user acceptance testing. Versions of the software,
known as beta versions, are released to a limited audience
outside of the programming team. The software is released to
groups of people so that further testing can ensure the product
has few faults or bugs. Sometimes, beta versions are made
available to the open public to increase the feedback field to a
maximal number of future users.[citation needed

Non-functional testing
Special methods exist to test non-functional aspects of software.
In contrast to functional testing, which establishes the correct
operation of the software (for example that it matches the
expected behavior defined in the design requirements), non-
functional testing verifies that the software functions properly even
when it receives invalid or unexpected inputs. Software fault
injection, in the form of fussing, is an example of non-functional
testing. Non-functional testing, especially for software, is designed
to establish whether the device under test can tolerate invalid or
unexpected inputs, thereby establishing the robustness of input
validation routines as well as error-management routines. Various
commercial non-functional testing tools are linked from the
software fault injection page; there are also numerous open-
source and free software tools available that perform non-
functional testing.

Software performance testing
Performance testing is in general executed to determine how a system
or sub-system performs in terms of responsiveness and stability under a
particular workload. It can also serve to investigate, measure, validate or
verify other quality attributes of the system, such as scalability,
reliability and resource usage.
Load testing is primarily concerned with testing that can continue to
operate under a specific load, whether that be large quantities of data
or a large number of users. This is generally referred to as software
scalability. The related load testing activity of when performed as a non-
functional activity is often referred to as endurance testing. Volume
testing is a way to test functionality. Stress testing is a way to test
reliability under unexpected or rare workloads. Stability testing (often
referred to as load or endurance testing) checks to see if the software
can continuously function well in or above an acceptable period.
There is little agreement on what the specific goals of performance
testing are. The terms load testing, performance testing, reliability
testing, and volume testing, are often used interchangeably.

Usability testing
Usability testing is needed to check if the user interface is
easy to use and understand. It is concerned mainly with the
use of the application.
Security testing
Security testing is essential for software that processes
confidential data to prevent system intrusion by hackers.

Internationalization and localization
The general ability of software to be internationalized and localized can
be automatically tested without actual translation, by using pseudo
localization. It will verify that the application still works, even after it has
been translated into a new language or adapted for a new culture (such
as different currencies or time zones).
Actual translation to human languages must be tested, too. Possible
localization failures include:
•Software is often localized by translating a list of strings out of context,
and the translator may choose the wrong translation for an ambiguous
source string.
•Technical terminology may become inconsistent if the project is
translated by several people without proper coordination or if the
translator is imprudent.
•Literal word-for-word translations may sound inappropriate, artificial
or too technical in the target language.
•Untranslated messages in the original language may be left hard coded
in the source code.

•Some messages may be created automatically at run time and the resulting string
may be ungrammatical, functionally incorrect, misleading or confusing.
•Software may use a keyboard shortcut which has no function on the source
language's keyboard layout, but is used for typing characters in the layout of the target
language.
•Software may lack support for the character encoding of the target language.
•Fonts and font sizes which are appropriate in the source language, may be
inappropriate in the target language; for example, CJK characters may become
unreadable if the font is too small.
•A string in the target language may be longer than the software can handle. This may
make the string partly invisible to the user or cause the software to crash or
malfunction.
•Software may lack proper support for reading or writing bi-directional text.
•Software may display images with text that wasn't localized.
•Localized operating systems may have differently-named system configuration files
and environment variables and different formats for date and currency.
To avoid these and other localization problems, a tester who knows the target
language must run the program with all the possible use cases for translation to see if
the messages are readable, translated correctly in context and don't cause failures.

Destructive testing
Main article: Destructive testing
Destructive testing attempts to cause the software or a sub-
system to fail, in order to test its robustness

The testing process
Traditional CMMI or waterfall development model
A common practice of software testing is that testing is
performed by an independent group of testers after the
functionality is developed, before it is shipped to the
customer. This practice often results in the testing phase
being used as a project buffer to compensate for project
delays, thereby compromising the time devoted to testing.[36]
Another practice is to start software testing at the same
moment the project starts and it is a continuous process until
the project finishes.
Further information: Capability Maturity Model Integration
and Waterfall model

Agile or Extreme development model
In contrast, some emerging software disciplines such as extreme
programming and the agile software development movement, adhere
to a "test-driven software development" model. In this process, unit
tests are written first, by the software engineers (often with pair
programming in the extreme programming methodology). Of course
these tests fail initially; as they are expected to. Then as code is written
it passes incrementally larger portions of the test suites. The test suites
are continuously updated as new failure conditions and corner cases are
discovered, and they are integrated with any regression tests that are
developed. Unit tests are maintained along with the rest of the software
source code and generally integrated into the build process (with
inherently interactive tests being relegated to a partially manual build
acceptance process). The ultimate goal of this test process is to achieve
continuous integration where software updates can be published to the
public frequently.

A sample testing cycle
Although variations exist between organizations, there is a typical cycle
for testing.[40] The sample below is common among organizations
employing the Waterfall development model.
•Requirements analysis: Testing should begin in the requirements
phase of the software development life cycle. During the design phase,
testers work with developers in determining what aspects of a design
are testable and with what parameters those tests work.
•Test planning: Test strategy, test plan, test bed creation. Since many
activities will be carried out during testing, a plan is needed.
•Test development: Test procedures, test scenarios, test cases, test
datasets, test scripts to use in testing software.
•Test execution: Testers execute the software based on the plans and
test documents then report any errors found to the development team.
•Test reporting: Once testing is completed, testers generate metrics and
make final reports on their test effort and whether or not the software
tested is ready for release.

•Test result analysis: Or Defect Analysis, is done by the development
team usually along with the client, in order to decide what defects
should be assigned, fixed, rejected (i.e. found software working
properly) or deferred to be dealt with later.
•Defect Retesting: Once a defect has been dealt with by the
development team, it is retested by the testing team. AKA Resolution
testing.
•Regression testing: It is common to have a small test program built of
a subset of tests, for each integration of new, modified, or fixed
software, in order to ensure that the latest delivery has not ruined
anything, and that the software product as a whole is still working
correctly.
Test Closure: Once the test meets the exit criteria, the activities
such as capturing the key outputs, lessons learned, results, logs,
documents related to the project are archived and used as a
reference for future projects

Automated testing
Main article: Test automation
Many programming groups are relying more and more on
automated testing, especially groups that use test-driven
development. There are many frameworks to write tests in,
and continuous integration software will run tests
automatically every time code is checked into a version
control system.
While automation cannot reproduce everything that a human
can do (and all the ways they think of doing it), it can be very
useful for regression testing. However, it does require a well-
developed test suite of testing scripts in order to be truly
useful.

Testing tools
Program testing and fault detection can be aided significantly by testing
tools and debuggers. Testing/debug tools include features such as:
•Program monitors, permitting full or partial monitoring of program
code including:
Instruction set simulator, permitting complete instruction level
monitoring and trace facilities
Program animation, permitting step-by-step execution and
conditional breakpoint at source level or in machine code
Code coverage reports
•Formatted dump or symbolic debugging, tools allowing inspection of
program variables on error or at chosen points
•Automated functional GUI testing tools are used to repeat system-level
tests through the GUI
•Benchmarks, allowing run-time performance comparisons to be made
•Performance analysis (or profiling tools) that can help to highlight hot
spots and resource usage

Some of these features may be incorporated into an Integrated
Development Environment (IDE).
•A regression testing technique is to have a standard set of tests, which
cover existing functionality that result in persistent tabular data, and to
compare pre-change data to post-change data, where there should not
be differences, using a tool like diffkit. Differences detected indicate
unexpected functionality changes or "regression".

Measurement in software testing
Usually, quality is constrained to such topics as correctness,
completeness, security, but can also include more technical
requirements as described under the ISO standard ISO/IEC
9126, such as capability, reliability, efficiency, portability,
maintainability, compatibility, and usability.
There are a number of frequently-used software
measures, often called metrics, which are used to assist
in determining the state of the software or the adequacy
of the testing.

Testing artifacts
The software testing process can produce several artifacts.
Test plan
A test specification is called a test plan. The developers are well aware
what test plans will be executed and this information is made available
to management and the developers. The idea is to make them more
cautious when developing their code or making additional changes.
Some companies have a higher-level document called a test strategy.
Traceability matrix
A traceability matrix is a table that correlates requirements or design
documents to test documents. It is used to change tests when related
source documents are changed, to select test cases for execution when
planning for regression tests by considering requirement coverage.

Test case
A test case normally consists of a unique identifier, requirement references from a
design specification, preconditions, events, a series of steps (also known as actions) to
follow, input, output, expected result, and actual result. Clinically defined a test case is
an input and an expected result.[41] This can be as pragmatic as 'for condition x your
derived result is y', whereas other test cases described in more detail the input
scenario and what results might be expected. It can occasionally be a series of steps
(but often steps are contained in a separate test procedure that can be exercised
against multiple test cases, as a matter of economy) but with one expected result or
expected outcome. The optional fields are a test case ID, test step, or order of
execution number, related requirement(s), depth, test category, author, and check
boxes for whether the test is automatable and has been automated. Larger test cases
may also contain prerequisite states or steps, and descriptions. A test case should also
contain a place for the actual result. These steps can be stored in a word processor
document, spreadsheet, database, or other common repository. In a database system,
you may also be able to see past test results, who generated the results, and what
system configuration was used to generate those results. These past results would
usually be stored in a separate table.

Test script
A test script is a procedure, or programming code that replicates user actions. Initially
the term was derived from the product of work created by automated regression test
tools. Test Case will be a baseline to create test scripts using a tool or a program.
Test suite
The most common term for a collection of test cases is a test suite. The test suite often
also contains more detailed instructions or goals for each collection of test cases. It
definitely contains a section where the tester identifies the system configuration used
during testing. A group of test cases may also contain prerequisite states or steps, and
descriptions of the following tests.
Test data
In most cases, multiple sets of values or data are used to test the same functionality of
a particular feature. All the test values and changeable environmental components are
collected in separate files and stored as test data. It is also useful to provide this data
to the client and with the product or a project.
Test harness
The software, tools, samples of data input and output, and configurations are all
referred to collectively as a test harness.

Software techniques

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