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Web Software Testing: Ensuring Web Software Security And Functionality

The software development life cycle contains numerous stages.Software testing is one of the most essential stages. Different types of testing are employed in each phase beginning with development till it reaches the market. These methods are employed during various stages of the SDLC. Moreover there are different varieties of the software that needs to be tested before it is released to the costumer.

There are many different classes of software and software for web applications is one of them. With the advent of the Internet web software has significantly increased in importance, as the Internet has had a substantial impact on our daily lives. The majority of the security threats start off from Internet and it is necessary to make sure that the web software is carefully tested prior to releasing to the costumer.

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.There are different methods that the test engineers use to test this software. They are code testing, load testing, compatibility testing, functional testing and regression testing.

The web software is usually released by means of a model 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. This testing will be upon incomplete software and will be tested for small parts of the software. 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 stage is finished, the software advances to the beta phase of testing. The web software should be fully completed by now. The software is released to a restricted number of users for testing before it is officially released. In case of website design it is easy to put together the various pages as the website design uses HTML. So the alpha/beta technique is generally not used for website development. 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.

When software testers or development engineers are code testing they are checking for the presence of software bugs. It’s essential for the software to be free of bugs because the web development process is very quick. A popular method used by experienced programmers for bug free coding is the paired-programming.

Two coders working at a single workstation it is at the core of paired programming. The developer typing the code is called the driver while the programmer that checks every line of code as it is produced is called the observer or the navigator. The judgment behind taking up this method is the following. The Economist proclaims that, “Laurie Williams of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City has shown that paired programmers are only 15% slower than two independent individual programmers, but produce 15% fewer bugs.”

As the development process continues the software is tested repeatedly. By the time it’s finally released the software is free of bugs. Load testing is used to check if a web-site/application will fail or loss performance under the added pressure of heavy loads or imputs from multiple users log-in, mail servers, etc. This type of testing will help to arrive at statistics such as how many users the site will sustain at the same time, the quantity of communication it will hold and the reaction time under various circumstances.

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. Regression testing is performed to ensure that enhancements, defect repairs or other changes to the software have not disrupted any existing functionality.

When interative methodology is used to develop software regression testing is crucial. 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. All the types of test mentioned above are necessary to provide complete web software testing.

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