#software integration testing

Code that passes evaluation is ready for integration. This is the final phase of the ADD cycle, where generated code becomes part of your system. But integration is more than merging a pull request. It is where AI-generated code meets the full reality of your codebase, your testing infrastructure, your deployment pipeline, and your team’s practices. Integration also closes a feedback loop. What…

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The software applications driving the modern digital ecosystem, in conjunction with the hardware systems, are dependent on various third-party applications and platforms. The omnichannel footprint of software means each module (and the interface between modules) needs to function smoothly to deliver the expected outcomes. This is ensured by conducting software integration testing.

One of the important characteristics of a software application are the seamless flow of information between its two ‘units’ or ‘modules’. However, the flow of information could be interrupted by the presence of glitches, which if not identified and corrected in time can make the application faulty. Thus, software integration testing helps to expose faults that lie at the interface between two integrated units. Once the individual units or modules are tested, the integration of interfaces gets validated.

To draw an an analogy to this type of testing, let us consider two groups of friends who have been invited to a party. To find out if they can get along, they should be subjected to an ‘integration test.’ This is done by bringing them to a single room and observe how they interact. In a similar vein, to check if each unit of software functions seamlessly, they need to be integrated and tested. Thus, integration testing, as part of the software testing services, checks if all unit’s function in harmony. It ensures if the modules developed by different developers are working towards a singular objective.

Various types of software integration testing

The various ways to test the integration of modules are as following:

Big Bang: As one of the most common ways to test the integration of software modules, the big bang involves smashing and testing all the units together. This may keep the tester in good stead if all the tests are completed or the software project is relatively small. However, it can have its cons as well. For example, in case a glitch is identified, it would be difficult for testers to figure out the right module or unit responsible for it. To find the erring module, testers have to detach a few of them and repeat the testing till they identify the glitch. Since this approach requires the modules to be ready before testing, it can extend the turnaround time for product release.

Incremental: Here, two or more logically aligned units are tested as part of a single batch. Thereafter, other similarly aligned units are checked eventually ensuring the interface of every single unit with another is validated. It combines both the bottom-up or top-down approaches.

Hybrid, Mixed, or Sandwich: This approach combines both bottom-up and top-down type of integration testing. Here, the top and lower modules are tested simultaneously for integration thereby deriving the best results. This approach can come in handy for large projects.

Best practices for integration testing

Since most software development processes are moving towards Agile or DevOps, it needs to be seen how integration testing can fit into a CI/CD environment. The software testing services for integration should have the following best practices.

Execute integration testing before unit testing: The waterfall model of software product testing has led us to believe that fixing a glitch later in the SDLC can be costly. This is due to the fact that one doesn’t move to the next stage until the completion of the present phase. This approach, however, can be turned on its head in an Agile environment. This is because Agile offers the flexibility to change the business logic in an SDLC.

Do not confuse unit testing with integration testing: Unit testing targets the basic code and needs to be run frequently to detect bugs. On the other hand, integration testing is much more time consuming and should not be part of every build cycle. However, it may be included in the daily build.

Extensive logging of processes: Identifying and mitigating bugs in a unit test is easy. However, given the scope and complexity of integration tests spanning a number of modules, doing the same is difficult. The need is to keep a record of processes to better analyze the reasons for failure.

Conclusion

Integration testing may be expensive and time-consuming but is essential to deliver quality products in the DevOps and Agile-driven environments.

The revolution in software development based on newer technologies has brought into sharp focus the importance of software product testing. To address the present day challenge of staying in competition by achieving customer satisfaction, the software product testing process has undergone a flurry of changes.

These changes have led to the shortening of the product lifecycle and validation of its quality in terms of functionality, performance, and security. So, what was earlier the traditional waterfall testing method, has given way to automation in the form of Agile and DevOps. The focus, therefore, is not on testing the product after its development but embracing shift left testing. According to this model, testing and integration are part of the early development cycle as opposed to the traditional approach.

Let us find out the latest trends in software product testing strategy and know how they help to keep all the stakeholders happy and contended – developers, testers, management, and customers.

#1 QA to Quality Engineering: If the traditional Quality Awareness process is about testing a product in the post development phase in a step by step manner (read waterfall,) the manual approach leaves a lot to be desired. Moreover, the changing market dynamics and user preferences have necessitated the quick delivery of quality products. To address this challenge, the traditional testing model has been found to be wholly inadequate due to the following reasons.

Step by step manual process is lengthy, error prone, and time consuming.

The process entails the previous steps to be fully completed before the new step could begin. This slows down the testing process considerably.

Since manual testing of numerous variables and dependencies is time consuming, not to speak of inducing fatigue, the manual testers often reduce the testing area.

The low attention span of manual testers means a lot of hidden glitches are left untouched. These glitches impact the quality of software leading to customer dissatisfaction.

Customer dissatisfaction affects the brand image of the company besides inviting lawsuits and regulatory censure.

To prevent the inadequacies associated with the waterfall model of QA, the model of Quality Engineering is used. The aim of the latter model is to prevent errors from creeping into the software. This is ensured by introducing test automation during the development stage instead of testing a product just before the delivery phase.

#2 Agile and DevOps: The shift towards Quality Engineering follows Agile and DevOps methodologies. According to these, the SDLC entails the development and testing teams to work simultaneously in sprints. So, if a module is written, it is sent to the testing team immediately. And if the testing team finds any error in the module the same is sent back for correction. This way, each module is first tested as part of the development sprint followed by its integration. The Agile method uses test automation in a big way and turns the software product testing services iterative, quick, and seamless.

However, with the delivery of a rich customer experience becoming the sole objective of business, the Development and Testing teams are combined with the Operations team as part of the DevOps model. This model aims at carrying out continuous testing and integration to make the product glitch free and updated with the latest trends and versions. DevOps ensures a software application has a proper interface with various devices, screen resolutions, platforms, frameworks, and networks. Besides validating software functional testing, DevOps secures a software against cyber threats from malware, trojans, ransomware, and viruses as well.

#3 Big Data Testing: With applications becoming more complex due to their interfacing with a range of devices, networks, frameworks, etc., a lot of data (in terabytes) gets generated. This humongous amount of data needs to be tested thoroughly by using sophisticated tools, analytics, methodologies, and frameworks.

#4 Internet of Things (IoT): The use of embedded software in devices in the form of sensors, actuators, etc., has necessitated the need for software application testing. The IoT testing should validate the functionality, performance, and security of the embedded software. This is of prime importance to ensure the successful functioning of the device in accordance with the test outcomes.

#5 Open source tools: The rising cost of test automation has turned the focus of using open source test automation tools (read free) such as Selenium. The built-in flexibility for customization and other benefits have made these tools highly sought after ones by the testers.

Conclusion

The growing competition, especially in the digital world, has meant that businesses are looking at strategies to not only beat the competition blues, but also secure their ROI as well. The evolving business strategies are forcing companies to adopt new technologies and generate quality software applications to bring about business transformation. This is especially done in the domains of social media, mobility, cloud computing, big data analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT).

However, parallel to the growth in the number of innovative software products and the volume of data, there is a growing cybersecurity threat as well. The bad news is that the threat is ever growing and is causing severe disruptions and financial losses to individuals, businesses, institutions and governments. Hence, to meet the growing challenge, businesses need to invest more in carrying out software product testing.

What is a cybersecurity threat?

As the world gets increasingly interconnected through the internet, there are individuals, groups, organizations and even governments trying to exploit the vulnerabilities of the systems, networks and applications. The cyber criminals are literally prowling the internet to target vulnerable systems. They do so to carry out espionage, money laundering, fund terror and narcotics trade, get monetary gains or seek revenge. These threats come in the form of viruses, ransomware, botnets, malware, and trojans that can wreak havoc on the systems, networks and applications.

Impact of cybersecurity threats

Financial loss: The cyber criminals are known for maliciously draining funds from the bank accounts of individuals, groups, and organizations. These funds run into billions of dollars. According to a study, the economic cost of cybercrime has risen to 0.8% of the global GDP or $600 billion a year (Source: http://www.computerweekly.com/news/252435439/Economic-impact-of-cyber-crime-is-significant-and-rising). Moreover, given the scale of under reporting of cybercrimes, the above figure is quite conservative. A major segment of the financial losses is attributed to the theft of intellectual property and confidential business information. Besides, financial loss can take place from denial or disruption of services as well. For example, the recent cases of ransomware attacks had caused severe disruption of services leading to a huge financial cost for the individuals and entities.

Loss of brand equity: Inadequate cyber security can result in criminals taking away confidential personal and business information held by entities such as banks, ecommerce firms, even individual accounts, and so on. When the customers of such entities end up facing financial losses, their implicit trust gets irretrievably broken. This leads to the loss of brand equity, a loss more severe than financial loss.

Costly legal suits: An inevitable consequence of personal data or money being siphoned off from companies is the filing of legal suits. Resultantly, the company targeted by cyber criminals can end up paying substantial sums of money as compensation. This can even lead to financial losses.

Falling foul of regulatory bodies: If companies are lax in implementing mandatory security protocols (exploited to the hilt by cyber criminals), they can face severe strictures and penalties.

Growing awareness about cybersecurity threats

Even though a lot of ground needs to be covered by the companies to secure themselves against cybersecurity threats, there is a growing awareness as well. According to a Gartner forecast, enterprises are likely to spend around $96.3 on cyber security in 2018 (Source: https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3836563)

Improving product security

The growing threat of cybersecurity and its dire implications signifies that it is no longer about merely reacting to the security breaches. The crying need is to strengthen the security defences of networks, systems, web and mobile applications. This intensifies the need for comprehensive software product testing services to validate software products. In addition to executing software application testing, there is a greater need to educate the users about such products.

No matter how strong the security architecture is, it can be easily broken into by the cyber criminals. This can be done by manipulating the users through social engineering, wherein individuals inadvertently end up giving their login/password details.

As businesses have become more aware of securing their assets — systems and networks, cyber criminals have started to target the applications. According to a Gartner report, around 80% of cyber attacks are at the application level. Hence, securing access to enterprise applications become the business imperative.

Areas of focus for software product testing

To identify and eliminate the vulnerabilities in the product (application) that can provide access to an unauthorised person/device

Incorporate or strengthen the security features such as encryption of data and authentication. Establish security protocols that involve the conduct of periodic or sudden audits

Keep the security firewalls updated to monitor any new cyber-attack attempts

Software product testing methods

Product access: By incorporating ‘roles and rights management’, the access to a software product can be tested through authentication and authorization. Some of the software product testing methods to form a part of this segment are password test, default login, test for logout, password change, recovery, security question and Captcha.

Protection of data: Again, going by the ‘roles and rights management’ the type of data to be accessed by a person should be established. For example, the person at the enquiry should not be able to view the encrypted passwords or sensitive product data.

Static application security testing (SAST) or white box testing: Through automation, a SAST model identifies the vulnerabilities an application can possess while dealing with users or data. The vulnerabilities could be in the form of SQL injection and Cross site scripting (XSS).

Conclusion

So far as the Information Technology industry is concerned, exponential growth has become a regular phenomenon. Although the history of IT is comparatively shorter than that of other industries, revolutions are predominant in it, taking into considerations the super computers, microchips, personal computers, power PC chips, Artificial Intelligence, the World Wide Web and lots more. Each of these had some or the other transformative impact on businesses and people. The last decade has witnessed the evolution of software testing solutions into a key constituent for businesses to accomplish success and a prospect for the most talented to build rewarding careers.

Before we make our websites public we must get things right. I have jot down a few points in my checklist to keep in mind a website must have before it is published to the web. Any site more or less must be usable and attractive and should explain its presence as well. Common problems that designers face by addressing their own sites in a Usability checklist of sorts. We work on many things like interacting with requirements of projects with clients, designing prototypes, coding, programming and testing – there’s a lot to keep track of and a lot to make sure gets done for the completion of a successful project. Points to remember for a Testing Checklist:

ID: is the identity of the site, it is usually found at the top left of a page right next to navigation of any kind. It’s also very important that the ID links back to the home page of the site, or at least add a “Home” link in the navigation on sub pages of a site.

Page Name: is as important as the Site ID, the Name of any page being browsed needs to be made very clear to the user. It must define the page content or what the page wants to narrate. It must be framing the content unique to that page, prominently placed and styled to show that it is indeed the page heading. The Page Name is often the largest text on the page which clearly emphasizes its importance.If the name of a page matches the text linking to the page, a user will have no trouble identifying what page they are on.

Navigation: is a must for a site, and it must be constant throughout all the pages. So that users can quickly browse through whatever information at a glance without any usability issue. There are two types of navigation primary and secondary ones.

Primary Navigation: contains the parent pages of the site, main parts of the site. It is a top level navigation, explains to the user what the main sections of the site are and helps them get to those sections. Usually the Primary Navigation is a part of a site's global navigation.

Secondary Navigation: divides primary navigation into subsections. Tertiary Navigation divides those subsections into even more sections and so on. Structure your navigation by keeping it simple in all the pages of the site. So that people can easily run around the sub-menus and main menus.

Utilities: are parts of your site that don't really get connected to the primary sections of your site. Examples of utilities include: About us, Contact Us, Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, etc. Be sure to include the most important ones for your site in a place where your viewers will easily find them, but don’t make your navigation too crowded by including lots of utility navigation links.

Navigation by Search: There are users who don't have time and search for the pages which they need to focus on so they directly search for those pages only which they need. It is the second form of navigation pretty much every site should have is navigated by searching. Some users prefer browsing, some prefer searching, so it’s usually wise to include both.

Current Location: We must highlight the buttons we are currently working on though a nice page title isn’t quite enough to tell a viewer where they are on a website. So that users are aware of where they are in relation to everything else.Signs all over large airports that clearly mark your location as well as locations of all the other important places.

Highlighting: In many ways a website is like a large airport. The viewer doesn’t really know how big the site is and without some sort of grounding a user will have a tough time placing themselves on the map. Some sites highlight the section of a site a user is about to explain to them where they are, while other sites may use breadcrumb navigation or other means to show the viewer where they are on the site. Perhaps one is more useful than the other in certain situations, but the point is a site should somehow always show the user where they are in relation to everything else.

Tagline: Taglines are a great way to explain the purpose of a site to a user quickly. They are useful because it gets the messages across. It’s just a small, well crafted summary about your site that’s shown right next to the Site ID, usually no more than a few words. Taglines are not mottos which describe the motivation or intention, but instead descriptions that convey the point of something. They are critical because people scan websites, especially first time visitors who are just beginning to understand your company.

Clear Visual Page: We must not forget the fact that content is the king of any website. It should be clear and precise. Content on a page isn’t something to be taken lightly. Newspapers as a classic example of how a content hierarchy should appear online. Well constructed pages using clear headings to organize content and subheadings to make that content easier to read and appear. User should not get lost inside page, content need to be relevant up to date and well organized and should be written uniquely for each page of your website and should be written as if you are talking to the customers.