What are different aspects of exploratory testing?

First let us discuss a little about what is exploratory testing actually?
It is a term rarely heard of! Exploratory testing is a usual approach to software testing and can be defined as a test designing, test execution and simultaneously a learning process. It was named by Cem Kaner in 1983.

He stated:

"exploratory testing as a kind of software testing that is emphasized and focused up on the responsibility and the personal freedom of the software tester to optimize the quality and effectiveness of his /her work continually by taking in to consideration mutually supportive activities like test designing, test related learning, test result interpretation and test execution".

- These activities run in parallel to each other.

- Exploratory testing basically heeds to exploiting the creativity of the tester or the programmer.

- During the testing of the software, the tester comes across various new things to learn together with experiencing them.

- The tester or the developer with his /her creativity can generate new and better test cases to run.

- Exploratory can be thought of as a black box testing methodology or technique instead of thinking of it as an approach to testing that can be used for any type of testing methodology and also at any phase of development of the software system or application.

According to some misconceptions, the testing technique or the object is considered to be the key here but, it is not so.

- In actual, the key is the cognitive engagement of the software tester and his /her responsibility of managing time.

- The effectiveness of the exploratory testing depends basically on how it is performed.

- Exploratory testing should always be performed by skilled testers or developers.

- Exploratory testing can also be though of as an intellectual activity.

- Exploratory testing is all about discovering how the software system or application actually works and how it handles both the easy and difficult cases.

- The effectiveness or the quality of the testing is largely dependent on the skills for developing test cases by the tester.

- It also depends on his/ her ability to find defects in the software code.

We can say that the quality of the testing is directly proportional to the knowledge of the tester about the software product and different test methods.

- The more he/ she know about the software system under test and testing methodologies, the better will be the exploratory testing.

- While carrying out the exploratory testing, the expectations should be kept open.

- Only some results can be expected or predicted but not all.

- The tester is responsible for configuring, operating, observing and evaluating the product itself and its behavior, investigating the result and reporting information.

- If we see practically the actual testing is a combination of both scripted testing and exploratory testing but, depending on the context of the testing the tendency is towards either one.

Exploratory testing is more about thinking how the testing should be done more than a testing technique. The documentation part of the exploratory testing includes:

- Documentation of all the test cases used.
- Documentation of the bugs.

Exploratory testers use tools like:

- Screen capture
- Video tools

These tools are used to generate situations of interest or as a record of the exploratory session. Bugs are discovered quickly and the approach tends to be more intellectual. Deductive reasoning based on the results of the previous tests can also be used in the exploratory testing. This leads to increased bug detection when used properly. The main disadvantage is that the tests can’t be reviewed before hand.

What are different characteristics of performance testing?

Performance means a lot more than actually just testing the performance of a software system or application. It covers a wide range of concepts of software engineering and functionalities.

In performance testing, a software system is not merely tested on the basis of its functionalities, specifications and requirements but, it is also tested on the basis of the software system’s or application’s final performance characteristics which are measurable.

- Performance testing is both quantitative and qualitative kind of testing.
- In the field of software engineering, performance testing is typically done to determine the effectiveness and speed of a software system, hardware system, computer or device etc.

- Being a quantitative process, performance testing involves some lab tests like measurement of response time and MIPS (short form for “millions of instructions per second”) at which a software system performs.

- It also involves tests for testing the qualitative assets of a system like scalability, reliability and inter- operability.

- Often performance testing and stress testing are performed conjunction-ally.

- It’s a general kind of testing done to determine the behavior of a system whether hardware or software in the terms of stability and responsiveness when the system is provided with a significant workload.

- It is also carried out to measure, validate, verify and investigate the qualitative attributes of the system like resilience and resource usage.

- Performance testing is a sub category under performance engineering.
- It’s a kind of testing which aims to incorporate performance into the architecture and design of software or a hardware system.
- It’s basically done before the actual coding of the program.

Performance testing consists of many sub categories of testing. Few have been discussed in details below:

1.Stress testing:
This testing is done to determine the limits of the capacity of the software application. Basically this is done to check the robustness of the application software. Robustness is checked against heavy loads i.e., to say above the maximum limit.

2. Load testing:
This is simplest of all the testings. This testing is usually done to check the behavior of the application software or program under different amounts of load. Load can either be several users using the same application or the difficulty level or length of the task. Time is set for task completion. The response timing is recorded simultaneously. This test can also be used to test the databases and network servers.

3. Spike testing:
This testing is carried out by spiking the particular and observing the behavior of the concerned application software under each case that whether it is able to take the load or it fails.

Endurance testing:
As the name suggests the test determines if the application software can sustain a specific load for a certain time. This test also checks out for memory leaks which can lead to application damage. Care is taken for performance degradation. Throughput is checked in the beginning, at the end and at several points of time between the tests. This is done to see if the application continues to behave properly under sustained use or crashes down.

5.Isolation testing:
This test is basically done to check for the faulty part of the program or the application software.

6.Configuration testing:
This testing tests the configuration of the application software application. It also checks for the effects of changes in configuration on the software application and its performance.

Before carrying out performance testing some performance goals must be set since performance testing helps in many ways like:

- Tells us whether the application software meets the performance criteria or not.
- It can compare the performance of two application soft wares.
- It can find faulty parts of the program.