What is Application Testing?

Last Updated : 28 Aug, 2024

Application testing is an essential part of the software development process to maintain the standards of the application and its capabilities of providing the functionality for which it is being developed. As much as the user interface is checked to ensure that it meets the needs of the users, functional testing assists in the identification of defects or flaws in the application that may have effects on the users or the whole system. Thus, no matter if it was produced in the field of mobile application, web or complex enterprise software testing guarantees that it results in a final, stable and, most of all, effective product. Immerse yourself in the realm of application testing to learn the critical role it fulfils in providing quality software.

Table of Content

What is Application Testing?

Application testing is a broad process whose primary goal is assessing and proving the reliability of an application. This process entails using the application in a well-planned and organized manner to let a programmer discover some problems or a lack of conformity with the requirements and their functioning in different circumstances. It includes a physical and automated test approach, which makes it have wide coverage and ensures that all the aspects of the application are tested.

How to Test an Application?

1. Requirement Analysis

During Requirement Analysis, it is important to fully understand the identification requirements of the application that has to be tested. At the same time, while identifying clear objectives for tests, it becomes possible to set separate aims for testing, including checking concrete functions or searching for the possibilities of code failures.

2. Test Planning

The test Planning phase involves the preparation of a good test plan that describes the testing strategy, resources and time frame. Determining the testing resources required, such as instruments, equipment, programs, and people, helps make the testing process run and increase its efficiency.

3. Test Design

The Test Design phase fores building specific test cases based on the application documentation to make sure that all areas have been addressed.

4. Test Environment Setup

In the Test Environment Setup phase, the hardware and software that will be used for testing are prepared for testing. It is equally important to properly set up the tools and frameworks that are necessary for testing.

5. Test Execution

Test Execution involves the actual running of test cases either through manual testing or the use of tools to ascertain the usability of the application.

6. Defect Management

Defect Management refers to the process of tracking the defects as tested and reported to the actual development team for rectification.

7. Test Reporting

Test Results Reporting In the Test Reporting phase, it is essential to write the right test report, the status of the test case, and the defects. Preparation of elaborate test reports gives a synopsis of the entire testing procedure and the results.

8. Review and Analysis

The final phase called Review and Analysis is aimed at the discussion of the testing process and results with the team and checking everything that has been done.

9. Final Verification

Final Verification is to simply perform User Acceptance Testing (UAT) for the proper working & readiness of the production application.

10. Post-Release Testing

Post-release testing is known by another name after release the application is tested in the production environment to find any problems.

Application Testing methodologies

1. Manual Testing

Exploratory testing is a kind of testing where the tester has no scripts even though they go through the application in search of problem areas Ad-hoc testing is also a form of testing where the tests are performed without prior planning, and the tester’s instinct is relied upon.

2. Automated Testing

Automated testing involves a unit testing process that tests a unit of code whether it functions as required, an Integration test which tests for problems that may exist between integrated units, a Functional testing that tests the application against requirements.

3. White Box Testing

White box testing aims at the examination of the structure of the developed application encapsulated in the code and algorithms; every line of the code is executed to guarantee statement coverage; every decision point in the code is tested to address branch coverage.

4. Black Box Testing

Black box testing is a technique of checking the functionality of the application against the specific requirement without consideration of internal implementation details including functional and non-functional such as performance and security.

5. Grey Box Testing

Grey box testing is made up of white and black box testing where the tester has some but limited knowledge of the inner workings of the application to be focused from the outside yet with some inside information.

Test Plan for Application Testing

1. Introduction

In the introduction section, the reader is informed of the overall aim of the document, that is, the overall testing strategy. It separates the control or domain by outlining which areas need testing and which ones will not.

2. Test Strategy

The examples of tests Include functional, performance, and security among others where this test strategy seeks to outline them. It also defines the level of testing as unit and integration tests, also describes the approach to be applied, showing the difference between manual and automation testing applied during the process.

3. Test Scope

Test scope determines the aspect of the system to be included in the testing process, features, modules, and functionalities to be tested. It also defines any items that have been deemed not to be feasible or are out of the domain of assessment.

4. Test Environment

The set-up of the test environment involves identifying the hardware that will be required for the test environment for instance servers mobile devices and the software that is needed in the test environment including operating systems testing tools among others.

5. Test Deliverables

As for test deliverables, it is material to note that they contain documentation and products from the testing phases which include test plans, test cases and scripts. It also consists of data tests that were used, reports that have been derived from the testing, and the logging of defects together with the status and solution.

6. Test Schedule

It defines the objectives of the testing, that is the start and end date of test phases, and a description of the test tasks and responsibilities both at individual and organizational levels.

7. Test Execution

Testing execution is concerned with issues such as the running of test cases, and whether the test cases should be run alone or if they should be run in conjunction with other test cases. It involves means of reporting and tracking required corrections so that any issue related to a rendered product, service or project is recorded and managed properly.

8. Test Closure

Test closure specifies when testing is done and includes such factors as running all the test cases, lack of crucial defects, and so on. It also has a field of preparing a test summary report and shortening any activities for post-release testing that may be necessary when the application is live.

Application Testing Tools

1. Functional Testing Tools

Selenium: An open-source tool for website QA testing that is quite popular and well-liked among users. It supports several browsers and programming languages.
Appium: The free software that enables the automating of mobile applications on Android and iOS operating systems.
TestComplete: Utilities for functional UI testing of commercial applications, both as a standalone solution and as an extension for desktop, Web, and mobile applications.
Ranorex: A software testing automation tool that primarily focuses on GUI and also supports web, mobile, and desktop applications.

2. Performance Testing Tools

JMeter: A tool developed by Apache for load and performance testing of Web applications.
LoadRunner: A testing tool provided by Micro Focus to handle a variety of applications.
Gatling: It is a web application load testing tool based on open-source.
BlazeMeter: A tool that is similar to JMeter, yet supplemented by the functionality of performance testing, cloud testing, etc.

3. Security Testing Tools

OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy): A free and powerful tool for OWASP testing for viewing vectors in web applications.
Burp Suite: A frequently used commercial software product to assess the security of Web applications.
Nessus: A frequently known scanner for detecting vulnerabilities in a system.
Acunetix: A freeware web vulnerability tool.

4. Continuous Integration (CI) Tools

Jenkins: A CI/CD tool that is freely available with the capability to link with multiple testing automation tools.
CircleCI: A CI tool that can facilitate the testing phase and synchronizes with different version control systems.
Travis CI: An application that resides in the cloud that enables testing and deployment functionality within CI.

5. Test Management Tools

TestRail: A tool that can be used for the planning and tracking of the test cases.
Zephyr: A test management tool that can easily work with Jira to track projects and offer a more effective report presentation.
QTest: Now there is a possibility of using a single, well-designed, up-to-date and all-purpose test management platform that covers the whole testing life cycle.

6. Code Quality and Static Analysis Tools

SonarQube: A free-to-use tool for the constant assessment of code health.
Checkmarx: Commercial tool for SAST-Static application security testing.
Coverity: Source code analysis tool that aids in the identification of defects in the source code.

7. Unit Testing Tools

JUnit: a testing framework for unit testing of Java applications.
NUnit: An independent unit testing framework for. NET applications.
TestNG: JUnit but a more flexible and powerful testing framework for the Java 2 Platform.

8. Bug Tracking Tools

Jira: An issue and project tracking software that is known to be compatible with most of the test management software.
Bugzilla: An open-source system/ software for tracking bugs.
MantisBT: An issue tracking system that you can install on your site and modify, wanted to be labelled as “open source software”.

Best Practices for Application Testing

1. Early and Continuous Testing

Begin testing as soon and as often as possible in the SDLC process (Shift Left) to catch most of the defects before they advance further and require more time and effort to handle. Integrating continuous testing within the CI/CD pipeline helps quickly identify problems of new code changes in the development process.

2. Comprehensive Test Planning

Testing goals or purposes have to be resolved; these include functionality, accuracy, performance, and security. Learn how to come up with a live test plan, which will include aspects such as the extent of testing, resources, schedule, and results for purposes of planning the test adequately.

3. Use of Test Automation

Develop an automated plan on how to prioritize the tests according to their specificity, the amount of required frequency, and the degree of risk. Choose automation tools that should go with the development framework and retain the simplicity, reusability and modularity of the test scripts so that they can be updated as the application grows.

4. Thorough Test Coverage

Make sure all the layers of the application such as the graphical user interface, back-end services, and the corresponding databases have been tested. Test units and components together with integration, system, performance, security and UAT testing to gain coverage and quality.

5. Use Realistic Test Data

Use actual data in the test cases so that the results obtained will be as close to a real situation as possible. The best practices to be followed while handling test data are data masking techniques and cleaning up of test data after tests have been conducted safely.

6. Performance and Scalability Testing

It is recommended to perform load testing to assess the application stability in case of several users’ access, or stress testing to define the application’s behaviour in conditions that it has not been tested before and reveal its bottles.

7. Effective Defect Management

Implement the use of a defect tracking system in tracking of defects an organization experiences during the testing process. Defect correction should be done in order of priority following the impact they have on the application; therefore, severe problems should be corrected first.

8. Documentation

Always archive test cases, scripts, data and results to allow for easy transfers of knowledge and other purposes. Update the test artefacts up to the present version of the application and the current testing process.

9. Scalable Test Environments

If you want to obtain relevant results of the testing, try to mirror the test environment to production as much as possible. Utilize Infrastructure as Code (IaC) technologies to make scalability and reproducibility of test environments to a high degree of efficiency.

Application Testing Challenges

1. Complexity of Applications

Contemporary applications are complex structures of many tiers and are connected with countless numbers of services, making the testing elaborate. To counter this problem one should adopt and employ the concept of modular testing, testing in isolation and utilizing the service virtualization to mimic the dependencies for the end-to-end testing.

2. Frequent Changes and Updates

The fact that CI is done frequently as well as updates being constant makes it hard to maintain updated test cases. Perform mostly constant testings, and keep a reliable regression test plan. Write test scripts as you would application codes and common version control should be used to manage them.

3. Test Data Management

It is difficult to generate and also maintain actual and sensible test data because of data protection laws. In this case, data anonymization should be applied to avoid revealing sensitive details, while automated test data generation and management can help to ease the procedure.

4. Security Testing

Addressing security threats and risks is delicate work, and one needs some skills and equipment to perform it. Under DevSecOps adopt security testing at the development phase, utilize automatic security scanning tools, and perform security assessment and hacking.

5. Cross-Platform and Cross-Browser Testing

Making it possible to have a harmonized function of a website on varying platforms, devices, and browsers requires a lot of effort. Cross-browser testing tools and emulators should be adopted to automate their compatible testing and get prioritized according to users' traffic.

6. Handling Large Data Volumes

When testing applications with large data quantities, there is a strain on resources hence affecting the results. Particularly apply data management approaches and optimization in data handling and processing, partitioning and index data to cater to large amounts of data.

7. Managing Technical Debt

Technical debt stack leads to high maintenance costs and low testing qualities. Code and test scripts should be refactored often to keep the level of technical debt low and technical debt should be regularly paid in the course of the development cycle.

Mobile Application Testing

Mobile application testing is often identified as a process of evaluating the software application on a mobile platform for its reliability, efficiency, and compatibility. It covers a broad area of tests to help establish that the app runs as desired across various gadgets, platforms, and network conditions. The main of testing is to ensure that all the requirements in the app are met, it functions correctly under different circumstances or situations and it is user-friendly.

Example Test Cases for Mobile Application Testing

1. Functional Testing

Test case 1: To check that the mobile app can be installed and run by the user.

Steps: You should download the application from the app store, follow the instructions to install the app on the device and open the applicated.
Expected Result: The app should run successfully without any kind of installation issues and should open up on the home screen.

Test Case 2: Verify that the user can register a new account.

Steps: Open the app, navigate to the registration screen, enter valid user details, and submit.
Expected Result: The user should receive a confirmation message and be redirected to the login screen.

2. Usability Testing

Test Case 3: The test is aimed at checking the application’s usability and convenience of its operation.

Steps: Swiping through different screens and tabs of the app.
Expected Result: All the screens must meet the concept of Convenience so that the navigation is simple and makes common sense.

3. Performance Testing

Test Case 4: Test the load behaviour of the app.

Steps: Imitate several users and make it look as if they are interacting in various ways at the same time.
Expected Result: The load should be processed without freezing or crashing the app or a measurable reduction in performance.

Test Case 5: Check the time the app takes to load.

Steps: Determine the time it takes to reload the application after freezing for a long time, for instance after a full night.
Expected Result: The app should load in a reasonable amount of time (e.g., less than 3 seconds).

4. Security Testing

Test Case 6: Data transmission which contains user data should be encrypted.

Steps: Monitor the network traffic during the data transfer (for example login, data put).
Expected Result: Data should only be shared via secure means (HTTPS) and should look encrypted.

5. Localization Testing

Test Case 7: This will check if the app supports different languages Interview Questions Note: Ask questions about what specific features of the app as follows.

Steps: Switch the language of your device and start the application.
Expected Result: The content of the app must be translated properly and the size of the text and images must be also matched properly.

Mobile Testing Challenges

Device Fragmentation

Due to the difference in sizes, resolution, kinds of hardware and operating systems on different types of mobile devices, it has become almost impossible to have constant performance.

Operating System Fragmentation

Mobile applications require a choice of operating systems to develop (iOS & Android) and the versions of each on the market. Update the testing matrix often to capture new operating systems and ensure that your set testing scripts are compatible with different versions of the same operating systems to optimize your tests.

User Experience (UX) Consistency

The stability of the UX by other screen dimensions and resolutions may be difficult to achieve. Always follow their recommendations like Google Material Design for Android and the Human Interface Guidelines for iOS and conduct user trials to capture real user feedback and improve on it as may be useful.

App Store Approval Process

Applications must reflect the rules of app stores, as well as the norms of legislative restrictions on applications, such as Google Play or Apple App Store. Always take time to revise the app store guidelines follow them to the letter and make sure that testing is done for the app to meet all parameters required for the app to be accepted into the app store and not rejected.

Globalization and Localization

Mobile apps should accommodate as many languages and locales as possible that will suit the variety of customers. Run localization testing to check if translations into other languages and used formats are proper. One should adopt the automation of translation and localization tasks to enhance their effectiveness.

Hardware Features and Sensors

Consequently, several mobile applications depend on the available hardware facilities including cameras, GPS, and accelerometers. This will allow the system to work cohesively with all forms of hardware and other devices. If you do not have physical sensors, use emulators and simulators as a way of testing sensor-related functionalities.

Third-Party Integrations

One of the problems with applications that rely on third-party services and APIs is that they can run into problems if these elements do not work. The challenge of the third-party services is to see how the app performs when these are unavailable or unresponsive and the app should still be able to carry out intended actions or perform fallbacks.

Data Privacy and Compliance

Mobile apps have standards of data privacy such as GDPR and CCPA among others. Perform a privacy testing checklist to be able to assess the explicit privacy risks that the app possesses and also confirm compliance with the relevant legal policies.

Conclusion

In conclusion, application testing is a crucial procedure in the development of applications and facilitates the provision of well-functioning, reliable and well-received applications. When used accordingly, several types of testing and numerous accepted standards will help developers pin down problems in the software and mend them in the shortest time possible, while also optimizing its functionality, safety, and performance in other operating environments. Application testing results in better software quality and satisfaction of users, and a decrease in post-deployment failure.