In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, as the need for technology ascends ever-higher, having an understanding of a few topics in the technological field of software becomes a necessity.
In particular, we are going to understand a bit about the two important aspects of software testing that complement each other. Software testing is a diverse field, with many procedures aimed at testing different components of software. The two concepts we are going to learn more about in detail are the implementation of functional testing services and performance testing services.
What is Functional Testing?
Functional testing is the practice of validating a software’s functionality by providing appropriate inputs to each function of the software product. Then verifying the output received against the actual functional requirements of the application or system. This method is also known as component testing.
Here, the tester is only testing the functionality of the software product as per given specifications, and not the lines of code. This method further adds to the process known as black-box testing. Where the tester as an end user checks only if the software functions accurately or not. This is a testing procedure that can be carried out in a manual way or with the help of automate testing tools.
During the development phase of software, functional testing is conduct first, and the types of functional testing include:-
- Unit Testing
- Smoke Testing
- Sanity Testing
- Integration Testing
- Usability Testing
- Regression Testing
Let’s expand a bit to understand in depth about the types of functional testing and what they include.
1. Unit Testing:-
Unit Testing is the initial level of testing involving the individual components or units of code. To see if those are functioning according to the expected output.
2. Smoke Testing:-
Smoke Testing helps decide if the main functionalities of the application or system are working and functioning without any defects or constraints. Thus allowing us to move on to the next stage of functional testing.
3. Sanity Testing:-
Sanity Testing is a testing method that helps us to validate if, after any changes in the code, or alterations. There are any variations in the previously tested functionalities.
4. Integration Testing:-
Integration Testing is implemented to validate how different components of a software function when integrated with each other. If the integration is not having any undesirable impact.
5. Usability Testing:-
Usability Testing is a procedure where real users are to interact with the software and validate the application or system’s user-friendliness and ease of use, while also identifying any issues with the user experience.
6. Regression Testing:-
Regression Testing is implement to check if the new code changes or alterations have not resulted in a negative impact on the existing functionality of the software and that it is continually performing as expected.
Let’s move on to learn more about the second important aspect of software testing.
What is Performance Testing?
Performance testing is a core non-functional testing technique that helps validate a software’s performance and scalability under various workloads. In this technique, various test cases are design with the function to simulate different loads and conditions on the software and verify how well the software functions and behaves under varying conditions.
In this specific procedure, it is not quite easy to perform manual testing, since it requires multiple inputs to be provid to the software, and then only can the software’s performance and scalability be corroborate accurately. It is to be noted that, unlike functional testing, performance testing is generally execute after the software is in a stable condition and move to the production stage.
While performing performance testing services, various factors of the software application are to be validate, like the response time, load, stress, and stability of the software. These factors easily help to conclude if the software is functioning properly in a growing environment, and can easily scale to accommodate a large number of users.
As stated above, the different types of performance testing are:
- Load Testing
- Stress Testing
- Scalability Testing
- Stability Testing
Let us dive deeper into the different types of performance testing techniques.
1. Load Testing:-
Load Testing is a technique that is implement to validate how the software performs under normal and project loads, and identify any potential issues with the software that might take place when a large number of users are accessing the application or system simultaneously.
2. Stress Testing:-
Stress Testing is an elevated form of load testing that simulates the software’s behavior and performance in extreme conditions to understand its limitations and work towards resolving them.
3. Scalability Testing:-
Scalability Testing helps validate a software’s adaptability to increasing load by adding more resources to the software’s existing form.
4. Stability Testing:-
Stability Testing is a form of testing where conditions of increase workload are maintained for longer periods of time. Thus helping to identify any issues with the software, like performance degradation, or memory leaks.
Considering the above points, it can be conclude that both testing methods serve different purposes in the software lifecycle and are equally important. Functional testing allows to validate if the software functions as expected. While performance testing helps to see how the software performs in varying degrees of loads.
Therefore, it is pertinent to decide when to implement the relevant testing methods as per your software requirements, be it software functional testing or software performance testing, to enhance your software quality exponentially.
