What are different phases of web application testing?

What is a web application actually? How do we define it? Let us put it in very simple words!

" A web application is much like any other normal application, the only difference being that a web application can be accessed only over an internet connection."

So only the accessibility makes it different form the other types of applications.

What is Web Application?
- A web application can be purely an individual application with its own spate existence over the web.

- But, there are several other kinds of web applications which are written in the Java script and are embedded in a web page or web site.

- The scripts that are used to write these web applications should be supportable by the web browsers.

- The scripts are usually a combination of Java and HTML codes and can be executed only with the help of a web browser and otherwise not possible.

What makes these web applications so popular among today’s generation?

- It is nothing else but the ubiquity of the web browsers.

- The web applications make use of the web browsers as a running client.

- Most of the web applications display the property of the cross platform compatibility i.e., they can be used on multiple platforms and across multiple browsers.

- This further makes them very much popular.

- Web applications like online retail sales and wikis are gaining so much of popularity world wide.

- As the number of users of the web applications keep on increasing the more vulnerable its following aspects become: security, reliability and quality.

These are some of the most crucial factors responsible for the success of a web application.

What can be done to improve their efficiency?

- Effective testing is one such measure which can improve the performance of any web application.

- Performing a web application testing is kind of tough task and requires great skills since the tester has got no direct control over the working of the web application.

Phases of Web Application testing
A typical web application testing comprises of three main phases:

1.1st phase: Testing of the Web tier
This phase involves the testing of the web application for the cross browser compatibility. The web application is checked the commonly and widely used web browsers.

2. 2nd phase: Testing of the middle tier
This phase involves the testing of the security related aspects as well as the functionality and features of the web application.

3. 3rd phase: Testing of the Data base tier
This phase involves the determination of the integrity of the data base of the web application as well its components. This phase is also concerned with the verification of the components of the web application.

Steps followed in each phase are:
Whichever the phase may be, there are common steps that are followed in every phase.
- First step is usually the loading of the web application on to a web server. The testing is not concerned with the location of the server! It might be known or unknown, it doesn’t matters.

- After this step, the second step involves the installation of this web application on the client side server.

- The web application is tested on the client’s side. The following mentioned aspects are foremost tested:
1. Browser compatibility
2. Operating system compatibility
3. Error testing
4. Static pages
5. Validation of the CSS and HTML code (either by checking the URL or by uploading)
6. Load testing and
7. Back end testing.