Manual Testing Tips

Manual Testing Tips

Web Testing
During testing the websites the following scenarios should be considered.

• Functionality
• Performance
• Usability
• Server side interface
• Client side compatibility
• Security

Functionality:
In testing the functionality of the web sites the following should be tested.

• Links
• Internal links
• External links
• Mail links
• Broken links
• Forms
• Field validation
• Functional chart
• Error message for wrong input
• Optional and mandatory fields
• Database
• Testing will be done on the database integrity.
• Cookies
• Testing will be done on the client system side, on the temporary internet files.
  

Performance:
Performance testing can be applied to understand the web site's scalability, or to benchmark the performance in the environment of third party products such as servers and middleware for potential purchase.
Connection speed:

o Tested over various Networks like Dial up, ISDN etc

Load

o What is the no. of users per time?
o Check for peak loads & how system behaves.
o Large amount of data accessed by user.

Stress

o Continuous load
o Performance of memory, cpu, file handling etc.

Usability :

Usability testing is the process by which the human-computer interaction characteristics of a system are measured, and weaknesses are identified for correction.
Usability can be defined as the degree to which a given piece of software assists the person sitting at the keyboard to accomplish a task, as opposed to becoming an additional impediment to such accomplishment. The broad goal of usable systems is often assessed using several

criteria:

• Ease of learning
• Navigation
• Subjective user satisfaction
• General appearance

Server side interface:

In web testing the server side interface should be tested.
This is done by Verify that communication is done properly.
Compatibility of server with software, hardware, network and database should be tested.
The client side compatibility is also tested in various platforms, using various browsers etc.

Security:

The primary reason for testing the security of an web is to identify potential vulnerabilities and subsequently repair them.
The following types of testing are described in this section:

• Network Scanning
• Vulnerability Scanning
• Password Cracking
• Log Review
• Integrity Checkers
• Virus Detection

Performance Testing

Performance testing is a rigorous usability evaluation of a working system under realistic conditions to identify usability problems and to compare measures such as success
rate, task time and user satisfaction with requirements.
The goal of performance testing is not to find bugs, but to eliminate bottlenecks and establish a baseline for future regression testing.

To conduct performance testing is to engage in a carefully controlled process of measurement and analysis. Ideally, the software under test is already stable enough so that this process can proceed smoothly.
A clearly defined set of expectations is essential for meaningful performance testing.
For example, for a Web application, you need to know at least two things:

• expected load in terms of concurrent users or HTTP connections
• acceptable response time
  

Load testing:

Load testing is usually defined as the process of exercising the system under test by feeding it the largest tasks it can operate with. Load testing is sometimes called volume testing, or longevity/endurance testing
Examples of volume testing:

• testing a word processor by editing a very large document
• testing a printer by sending it a very large job
• testing a mail server with thousands of users mailboxes

Examples of longevity/endurance testing:
testing a client-server application by running the client in a loop against the server over an extended period of time
Goals of load testing:
Expose bugs that do not surface in cursory testing, such as memory management bugs, memory leaks, buffer overflows, etc.
ensure that the application meets the performance baseline established during Performance testing. This is done by running regression tests against the application at a specified maximum load.
Although performance testing and load testing can seen similar, their goals are different. On one hand, performance testing uses load testing techniques and tools for measurement and benchmarking purposes and uses various load levels whereas load testing operates at a predefined load level, the highest load that the system can accept while still functioning properly.

Stress testing:
Stress testing is a form of testing that is used to determine the stability of a given system or entity. This is designed to test the software with abnormal situations. Stress testing attempts to find the limits at which the system will fail through abnormal quantity or frequency of inputs. Stress testing tries to break the system under test by overwhelming its resources or by taking resources away from it (in which case it is sometimes called negative testing).
The main purpose behind this madness is to make sure that the system fails and recovers gracefully -- this quality is known as recoverability.