What comes to mind first when you consider software testing? Integration tests and unit tests are frequently on the minds of many engineers. A codebase with a top-quality manufacturing must be created and maintained using the two software testing techniques. However, they don’t serve all by themselves.
The testing procedure of your team should evaluate the complete application, take a broad look at the way it functions whenever it is working properly, and sound the alarms whenever deviations are discovered. A thorough software testing method must include both non-functional and functional testing to increase trust at every application tier.
What Does Functional Testing Mean?
Functional testing is concerned with evaluating an application’s usability in light of some standards or requirements. Testing sections of an underlying code during functional testing is common.
Individual modules for testing in isolation does not give a clearer broader picture than comparing actual outputs to intended behaviors. Errors typically occur when modules interact with one another.
Functional testing comes in various forms, including:
- Unit tests (which is also useful for non functional testing)
- Testing for integration
- Testing for user acceptance
- Closed-box test
Unit tests
If a system is installed in any testing environment, the unit tests meant for the API application could send requests to it and then compare the results with the documentation. But there are only a few unit tests. Functional tests that cover the entire application frequently catch changes which unit tests miss whenever the application regresses or deviates in functionality.
Testing for integration
Software module integration testing verifies how they work together. The components depend on the explicit contracts in the way they interact when it is written by developers as loosely connected modules, as it typically should be.
Integration tests produce warnings whenever these interactions result in regressions as well as verify that each component of the product fulfills its contractual obligations.
Testing for user acceptance
The goal of the phase of user acceptance for software testing is to simulate real-world interactions as well as functionality by giving end users and otherwise their representatives access to some or all the program. Owing to its non-dependability, expense, and time commitment, testing for user acceptance is rarely significantly relied upon in healthy cultures for engineering. Nevertheless, some testing for user acceptance is an important step in the testing process for the majority of applications.
The Closed-box Testing
Here, the entire application is another type of functional testing that is possible. Closed-box testing ignores the application’s internal workings in favor of only testing the outputs of the application. When developing functional tests so as to complement the non functional tests, a lot of developers tend to gravitate towards it.
Only its output is examined; the code which interacts with its outermost layers gets automatically verified. For apps that only need API testing, this procedure is straightforward because the code just needs to make API calls as well as analyze the outcome.
Closed-box testing is becoming more challenging when used to apps having the user interface. Utilizing an advanced testing tool such as Selenium is one method of addressing this difficulty. With the assistance of these tools, code can communicate with such an application just like a user would in the web browser. User acceptability testing is automated with the help of Selenium and similar tools, which also improve reliability and scale. However, using closed-box testing for user interfaces is a difficult issue with particular difficulties. The engineering bandwidth of your team could be quickly depleted.
What Does Non Functional Testing Mean?
Non functional testing evaluates aspects of an application that don’t directly affect its functionality but are still important for the user experience. Although they aren’t functional parts of the software system, reliability and performance under stress can definitely break or make your user experience.
Non functional testing failures don’t always result in a problem that users would experience, but they can point to a larger systemic issue. Non functional testing come in a wide variety of forms.
Performance Testing
Performance is the focus of one crucial non-functional testing procedure. The software system is tested for performance to ensure it responds to queries quickly. Poor latency ruins the user experience, as well as a well-written tests for performance frequently find issues before users notice them.
Load testing
A comparable category of the non functional testing is load testing. Few systems can reply to a single request every second with the same speed as they can handle about 10,000 requests every second. A system’s ability to manage peak loads as well as fail gracefully whenever it doesn’t have the capability to handle the spikes in workload is verified through load testing.
Usability Testing
Testing for usability evaluates how well a user interacts with a product. Usability testing seems to be typically a manual technique which doesn’t scale effectively. However, the lack of the usability testing, particularly when localizing software, sometimes results in muddled and imprecise user interfaces. Integrating this kind of testing in the development process of your software is time well spent.
Security Testing
Another class of non functional testing is security testing. Your team must routinely test the applications to ensure that they are safe and the data is correctly handled.
Depending on how exposed an application is to potential attacks, security testing could range from routine penetration testing to automatic scanning. Many teams do not consider security testing to be a component of their testing arsenal. It is wise to incorporate security testing but also treat it with the same seriousness as the unit testing type.
Portability Testing
This software’s ability to run on many operating systems and not experience any bugs is tested for portability. The functionality of software running on the same operating systems but with different hardware is also tested here.
Accountability Testing
A test of accountability is conducted to see whether that system is functioning properly or not. Every function ought to produce the same outcome for which it was designed. If that system provides the expected output, then the test passes it, and otherwise, it fails.
Reliability Testing
The reliability test makes the assumption that a software system operates without error under the predetermined parameters. The required duration and quantity of processes to serve the system are specified. If this system fails under certain predetermined circumstances, the reliability test would also fail.
Efficiency Testing and Evaluation
An efficiency test looks at how many resources were used as well as how many were required to construct the software system. The evaluation of these three elements is also included.
- A software system must meet the needs of the client
- The software system must meet customer criteria
- The software system must be developed with sufficient effort.
What are the Benefits of Non Functional Testing?
- It offers a greater degree of security. This security forms a crucial component that keeps systems safe from online threats.
- It guarantees the system’s loading capacity so that all users can utilize it at once
- Also, it enhances the system’s performance.
- Since test cases never are altered, they need only be written once.
- When compared to some other testing techniques, there is a smaller overall time commitment.
Comparing Functional and the Non Functional Testing
Non functional tests verify that a code is performing the proper actions, while functional tests verify that such code is carrying out the proper actions. Methodologies enabling the validation of back-end and front-end behaviors and elements are present in both types. In terms of the types of tests the developer may run, there may be some overlap in-between both categories.
The issues that software solutions aim to address must be resolved. Non functional testing frequently refines only incidental implementation performance and details measures. These factors are also taken into consideration by a thorough testing process, especially when scaling is important.
Functional testing is frequently sluggish to execute and expensive to maintain and write. Because they provide test-driven construction and frequently result in self-documenting code, many developers place the greatest emphasis on the unit tests. Whenever the requirements for the code change, it is simple to adjust these tests and they can be run quickly. Closed-box testing, for example, requires a lot of time to execute and write even with contemporary tools including Selenium.
A thorough blend of functional as well as non functional testing is the testing strategy that is the most unbiased.
A “testing pyramid,” that instructs developers to write majority of the tests as a unit test because they are very fast to execute and write, is something that many developers adhere to.
Conclusion
As important as tests which verify functionality is non functional testing. Due to the improvements provided by non functional testing, it is not as significant, many teams give it lower priority. Also, users might not have been able to utilize the features that they require at all if functionality becomes broken. Functional tests are the cornerstone of many teams’ testing methods for software due to this, as well as quicker execution times but also reduced costs.
Nevertheless, non functional tests are important, and the team must work to include them. A top-notch testing suite would confirm a variety of non-functional traits and components, which includes usability and performance.
