Acceptance Testing is the final phase of software testing, performed to determine whether a system meets the acceptance criteria and is ready for deployment. This testing is usually conducted in a real-world environment by the end-users or stakeholders to ensure that the software fulfills their requirements and is fit for use.
For an e-commerce platform, acceptance testing might involve real customers using the website to complete various transactions, such as searching for products, adding items to the cart, and making a payment. Their feedback will help determine if the application is ready for launch.
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🛠️ Alpha Testing
- Definition: Alpha testing is an internal testing phase conducted by developers and QA teams in a controlled environment. It aims to identify bugs before releasing the software to external users.
- Example: After developing a new feature in a mobile app, the development team tests it to ensure functionality, usability, and overall performance. They might fix issues before the app is shared with a limited group of users.
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🔬 Beta Testing
- Definition: Beta testing is the phase where the product is released to a limited external audience to gather feedback and identify any remaining issues. This helps simulate real-world usage.
- Example: A software company releases a beta version of its application to a selected group of users who provide feedback on usability, performance, and any bugs they encounter. This helps the team make final adjustments before the official launch.
Acceptance testing also includes various non-functional testing areas to ensure that the software meets performance and usability standards.
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🚦 Load Testing
- Definition: Evaluates how the system behaves under expected user loads.
- Example: Testing an online booking system during peak hours to see if it can handle thousands of simultaneous users without crashing.
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💥 Stress Testing
- Definition: Tests the system's robustness by pushing it beyond its operational limits to see how it reacts under extreme conditions.
- Example: Intentionally overloading a web server to determine its breaking point and assess recovery capabilities.
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🕐 Soak Testing
- Definition: Determines if the system can handle a significant load over an extended period.
- Example: Running a web application with continuous traffic for 72 hours to check for memory leaks or degradation in performance.
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🌐 Accessibility Testing
- Definition: Ensures that the software is usable by people with disabilities.
- Example: Verifying that a website is navigable using a screen reader for visually impaired users.
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📈 Scalability Testing
- Definition: Tests the system's ability to scale up or down according to user load.
- Example: Evaluating an e-commerce site to see how it handles increasing traffic during a sales event and whether it can quickly adapt to sudden spikes.
- Selenium: For automated functional testing.
- JMeter: For load and performance testing.
- Postman: For API testing.
- Axe: For accessibility testing.
- Apache Bench: For basic load testing.
Security testing is a process to identify vulnerabilities, threats, and risks in a software application and ensure that the data and resources of the application are protected from potential intruders. Below are the specific areas of focus within security testing.
- Definition: Authentication verifies whether a user is who they claim to be by validating their credentials (e.g., username and password).
- Example: When a user logs into a banking app, their entered username and password are verified against the database to grant access.
- Definition: Authorization determines what an authenticated user is allowed to do within the application, specifying permissions based on user roles.
- Example: In a project management tool, a standard user can only view tasks, while an admin can create, edit, or delete tasks.
- Definition: Testing how cookies are set, managed, and secured to ensure that sensitive information is not exposed.
- Example: A web application stores user session data in cookies. Testing ensures that cookies are marked as secure and HttpOnly, preventing access via JavaScript.
- Definition: Session testing checks how session management is handled, including session timeouts and session ID security.
- Example: Testing a web application to ensure that after 30 minutes of inactivity, the session automatically logs out the user to prevent unauthorized access.
- Definition: Testing the encryption mechanisms used to protect sensitive data both in transit and at rest.
- Example: Verifying that user passwords are hashed and salted before being stored in the database to ensure they cannot be easily retrieved if compromised.
- Definition: Penetration testing simulates cyberattacks on the application to identify vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit.
- Example: A security team performs a simulated attack on a web application, attempting to exploit known vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting (XSS) to assess the security posture of the application.
Each focus area in security testing plays a critical role in ensuring the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of the software. Implementing comprehensive security measures will help protect the application and its users from potential threats.