Software Testing and Quality Assurance

Software testing can be defined as the process in which the tester aims at checking the software for errors and also, verifying that the functional requirements of a software are met. The system is examined under controlled conditions. The basic orientation is detection of faults within the system.

In this process, a program or an application is executed with the intentions of improving its quality. One strives to find the bugs within the software. As software industry has now grown in both size and complexity, so has its wide area of applications. We see soft wares in banking industry, in gaming industry, in management applications etc. Each has its own target customers and users. Before any software is launched, one must attempt to make an assessment as to its audience, customers, etc. The process of testing aims to aid in this regard.


Verification and Validation

Verification is a thwarting mechanism which helps in detection of all the possible weak points within a software before the process of testing actually begins.

Validation takes place after verification and this is where the concrete testing begins. One aims at finding the defects present in the functional requirements or the software's specifications.


Software Quality

The quality of any software can be determined by the following yardsticks:

- It must be free of bugs
- It must be delivered on the due date
- It must be complete within the budget initially allotted
- It must meet all the requirements and expectations of the client


Software quality assurance

Software Quality Assurance or SQA, as it is popularly known, is a method by which one aims at monitoring the whole process of software engineering and take measures at appropriate durations for ensuring that the quality of the software is not compromised with. This is approached by use of audits of quality management system by which the system was initially built. A few examples of the quality standards are CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) or ISO 9000.

SQA covers the whole process of development of any software and includes the design, coding, control of the code, reviews of the code, managing the configurations and the release of the final product. It is basically a method to control the processes of software development.

Advantages of SQA
- Improved customer satisfaction
- Reduced cost of development
- Reduced cost of maintenance
- Methodology of SQA
- Validation testing
- Data comparison
- Usability testing

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Command Types

SQA Robot test procedure commands are organized into these types,based on the tasks they perform in the script:

Control Flow command: Define the beginning and end of SQA Robot script, and the beginning and end of commands that save and restore windows. Control flow tasks include initialization and termination for test procedure playback. Used only in GUI procedures.

Object Scripting commands:Access an application's objects and object properties from within a test procedure script.Object Scripting tasks include retrieving and setting an object's properties.Used only in GUI procedures.

Test Case commands:Compare objects captured while playing back successive builds of the application-under-test against the established baseline data.If the objects are the same,the test case passes (Result equals 1).If the objectives are different,the test case fails (Result equals 0). Used only in GUI procedures.

User Action command:Correspond to user actions on specific objects while recording. Actions include operations like choosing a menu command,scrolling a list box,clicking a button,or typing text into an edit box.Used only in GUI Procedures.

Utility commands:Affect the flow of test procedure playback by setting wait times,calling other test procedures,starting applications,starting and stopping timers,and playing back low-level recordings. They also control output to the test log,retrieve results from running test procedures,and test characters used in statement.Used only in GUI procedures.

If you have Virtual User Recording installed.You can use these SQA Basic commands:

Datapool commands: Retrieve data from a datapool created with SQA Datapool Manager.

HTTP/HTTPS commands: Issue HTTP or HTTPS request to a Web server,depending on whether the server is SSL-protected.

Virtual User Commands:Performs operations in virtual user procedure.For example,virtual user command perform synchronization and timer operations for virtual users,and handle communications between the Master and Agent test stations.Expect for control flow commands,which must appear at the beginning and end of every script,the order of recorded commands depends on your recording options and user actions.

Closing Commands

All GUI procedure scripts must end with the following commands, which terminate the test procedure and reset SQA Robot.
EndPlay

(Visual Basic only) This is a subroutine defined by SQA Robot that terminates playback of a Visual Basic test procedure script.

EndSub

This indicates the end of the Main subroutine

InitPlay,SetProcID, and EndPlay are required by SQA Robot to initilize and terminate playback of Visual Basic scripts. These commands are not required for SQABasic scripts, Which can only be played back from within SQA Robot.

SQA Robot includes the StartSaveWindowPostions and EndSaveWindowPostions commands only if Save Window Positions is checked in the Recording Options dialog box.

User Action and Test Case Commands

User action commands represent the actions you take while recording a GUI procedure. They are not test cases,but represent your actions between test cases. User actions within a window are always preceded in the script by a Window SetContext statement establishing the context window within which the action occur.

PushButton Click, "VBName=SelectOk;VisualText=OK"

User action statement always begin with an object type (Pushbutton,Window,EditBox,etc..) followed by the action applied to it (Click,Resize,VScrollTo,etc..)

Result=WindowTC(CompareMenu,"VBName=Main;VisualText=Mortgage Prequalifier","CaseID=QBPRQ01A")

Test case and wait state functions are preceded by Result variable. A test case funciton corresponds to a test case you insert into the test procedure while recording. During playback,if the test case passes, Result equals 1. If the test case fails Result equals 0.

Window Restoration Commands

The following commands record the sizes and positions of open windows so that SQA Robot can restore the testing environment during playback. They also indicate the windows within which user actions occur.

StartSaveWindowPostions
EndSaveWindowPostions

These statements tell SQA Robot that,during playback, the intervening Window SetContext, Window MoveTo, and Window SetPostion commands are for windows restoration only. All playback timings default are set to zero to process these commands as quickly as possible. If any commands fails between StartSaveWindowPostions and EndSaveWindowPositions, that failure is reported to the test log as a warning, not a script command failure.

Window SetContext
Window SetPostion

The Window SetContext statement defines the context window for subsequent test cases and user actions, and Window SetPostion indicates the postion, size, and status of that context window. These statements can vary, depending on the window within which user actions occur.

During recording, SQA Robot saves the postions of windows that are normal,minimized, or maximized if Auto Record Window Size is checked in the Recording Options dialog box. It does not save the positions of hidden windows. During playback, SQA Robot restores the windows to their positions when the test procedure was recoreded. SQA Robot writes messages to the test log for any windows it cannot find on playback.