Software Testing Dictionary -5



High-level tests. These tests involve testing whole, complete products [Kit, 1995] 




Inspection A formal evaluation technique in which software requirements, design, or code are examined in detail by person or group other than the author to detect faults, violations of development standards, and other problems [IEEE94]. A quality improvement process for written material that consists of two dominant components: product (document) improvement and process improvement (document production and inspection).

Integration The process of combining software components or hardware components or both into overall system.

Integration testing - testing of combined parts of an application to determine if they function together correctly. The 'parts' can be code modules, individual applications, client and server applications on a network, etc. This type of testing is especially relevant to client/server and distributed systems.

Integration Testing. Testing conducted after unit and feature testing. The intent is to expose faults in the interactions between software modules and functions. Either top-down or bottom-up approaches can be used. A bottom-up method is preferred, since it leads to earlier unit testing (step-level integration) This method is contrary to the big-bang approach where all source modules are combined and tested in one step. The big-bang approach to integration should be discouraged.

Interface Tests Programs that probide test facilities for external interfaces and function calls. Simulation is often used to test external interfaces that currently may not be available for testing or are difficult to control. For example, hardware resources such as hard disks and memory may be difficult to control. Therefore, simulation can provide the characteristics or behaviors for specific function.

Internationalization testing (I18N) - testing related to handling foreign text and data within the program. This would include sorting, importing and exporting test and data, correct handling of currency and date and time formats, string parsing, upper and lower case handling and so forth. [Clinton De Young, 2003].

Interoperability Testing which measures the ability of your software to communicate across the network on multiple machines from multiple vendors each of whom may have interpreted a design specification critical to your success differently. Inter-operability Testing. True inter-operability testing concerns testing for unforeseen interactions with other packages with which your software has no direct connection. In some quarters, inter-operability testing labor equals all other testing combined. This is the kind of testing that I say shouldnÂ’t be done because it canÂ’t be done.[from Quality Is Not The Goal. By Boris Beizer, Ph. D.]

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