Defect: A Defect, in simple terms, is a flaw or an error in an application that is restricting the normal flow of an application by mismatching the expected behavior of an application with the actual one.
•The defect occurs when any mistake is made by a developer during the designing or building of an application and when this flaw is found by a tester, it is termed as a defect.
•It is the responsibility of a tester to do thorough testing of an application to find as many defects as possible to ensure that a quality product will reach the customer.
Defect Life Cycle in detail:
•The Defect Life Cycle, also known as the Bug Life Cycle, is a cycle of defects from which it goes through covering the different states in its entire life. This starts as soon as any new defect is found by a tester and comes to an end when a tester closes that defect assuring that it won’t get reproduced again.
•Defect Workflow •It is now time to understand the actual workflow of a Defect Life Cycle with the help of a simple diagram as shown below.
Defect States:
1) New: This is the first state of a defect in the Defect Life Cycle. When any new defect is found, it falls in a ‘New’ state, and validations & testing are performed on this defect in the later stages of the Defect Life Cycle.
2) Assigned: In this stage, a newly created defect is assigned to the development team to work on the defect. This is assigned by the project lead or the manager of the testing team to a developer.
3) Open: Here, the developer starts the process of analyzing the defect and works on fixing it, if required. •If the developer feels that the defect is not appropriate then it may get transferred to any of the below four states namely Duplicate, Deferred, Rejected, or Not a Bug-based upon a specific reason. We will discuss these four states in a while.
4) Fixed: When the developer finishes the task of fixing a defect by making the required changes then he can mark the status of the defect as “Fixed”.
5) Pending Retest: After fixing the defect, the developer assigns the defect to the tester to retest the defect at their end, and until the tester works on retesting the defect, the state of the defect remains in “Pending Retest”.
6) Retest: At this point, the tester starts the task of retesting the defect to verify if the defect is fixed accurately by the developer as per the requirements or not.
7) Reopen: If any issue persists in the defect, then it will be assigned to the developer again for testing and the status of the defect gets changed to ‘Reopen’.
8) Verified: If the tester does not find any issue in the defect after being assigned to the developer for retesting and he feels that if the defect has been fixed accurately then the status of the defect gets assigned to ‘Verified’.
9) Closed: When the defect does not exist any longer, then the tester changes the status of the defect to “Closed”.
10)Rejected: If the defect is not considered a genuine defect by the developer then it is marked as “Rejected” by the developer.
11)Duplicate: If the developer finds the defect as same as any other defect or if the concept of the defect matches any other defect then the status of the defect is changed to ‘Duplicate’ by the developer.
12)Deferred: If the developer feels that the defect is not of very important priority and it can get fixed in the next releases or so in such a case, he can change the status of the defect as ‘Deferred’.
•Not a Bug: If the defect does not have an impact on the functionality of the application, then the status of the defect gets changed to “Not a Bug”.
Defect Priorities:
•The QA team typically sets the priority status when the defect is brought to the attention of the development team and is based on the end user’s requirements.
•Low Priority: The defect fix is not of an urgent nature and can be delayed until more important fixes are completed.
•Medium Priority: The development team should fix the bug in subsequent builds.
•High Priority: The impact of the bug on the software is substantial and should be addressed immediately.
•Urgent Priority: The product cannot be used until the defect is fixed so it should be resolved urgently.
Defect Reporting:
•-Defect or Bug Report is the medium of communication between the tester and the programmer
•-Provides clarity to the management, particularly at the summary level •-Defect Report should be accurate, concise, thoroughly-edited, well conceived, high-quality technical document.
•-The problem should be described in a way that maximizes the probability that it will be fixed
•-Defect Report should be non-judgemental and should not point finger at the programmer
•-Crisp Defect Reporting process improves the test team’s communications with the senior and peer management.
Defect Template:
-Defect ID:
-Description:
-Feature/Module:
-Test Case Name:
-Reproducible (Yes/No) (does the defect comes again and again in a consistent way)
-Status: New/ Reopen
-Severity: Seriousness of Defect
-Priority: Importance of defect
-Reported Bug:
-Assigned to:
-Build Version ID:
-Suggested Fix: -Fixed by:
-Resolved by: -Resolved on:
-Resolution Type: (Guidelines given to the developer to fix the problem)
-Approved by:
Defect Classification :
•This section defines a defect Severity Scale framework for determining defect criticality and the associated defect Severity Levels to be assigned to errors found in the software. The defect can be classified as follows:
•Critical: There is a functionality block. The application is not able to proceed any further.(The application crashes)
•Major: The application is not working as desired. There are variations in the functionality. (The application is not doing what it is supposed to do) •Minor: There is no failure reported due to the defect, but certainly needs to be rectified. (Example: there is date format error) Cosmetic: Defects in the User Interface or Navigation. (UI error) •Suggestion: Feature which can be added for betterment.
Defect Types:
•The Defect can be of several types
–Functional Defects (requirement defects): The defect is filed against the functional requirements when the system does not fulfil some functionality correctly.
–Data Defects: Incorrect data population / update in database –Configuration Defects: When the defect is due to some configuration of the environment.
–Database Defect: Defect in the database schema/ Design –Boundary Conditions Neglected: Boundary conditions not addressed/incorrect –Logic Defect: Missing or Inadequate or irrelevant or ambiguous functionality in source code.
–Message Defect: Inadequate/incorrect/misleading or missing error messages in source code.
–Navigation Defect: Navigation not coded correctly in source code –Performance Defect: A Defect related to performance/optimality of the code
–Missing Requirements: Implicit/Explicit requirements are missed/not documented during requirement phase
–Missing Design: Design features/approach missed/not documented in the design document and hence does not correspond to requirements –Inadequate or sub optimal Design: Design features/approach needs additional inputs for it to be complete Design features described does not provide the best approach (optimal approach) towards the solution required
–Incorrect Design: Wrong or inaccurate Design Ambiguous Design: Design feature / approach are not clear to the reviewer. Also includes ambiguous use of words or unclear design features
A set of tools that allows automate web testing is known as Selenium.
Selenium is a free of cost and open-source automated testing framework used for validating and supporting web applications and automation across different platforms, browsers and programming languages. Selenium is not the name of just a single tool but rather a suite of software, each with a different approach to support automation testing where each piece caters to an organization’s various Selenium QA testing needs.
Introduction to Selenium:
Selenium was originally conceptualized and developed by a software engineer at ThoughtWorks named Jason Huggins, primarily as an internal software testing tool in 2004. At that time he was working on a web application that required frequent manual testing. He ultimately developed the JavaScript code that enabled the automation control of the browser which significantly streamlined the testing process. The code that was open-sourced later the same year came to be known as “Selenium Remote Control”. Several other software developers got involved in the Selenium Project over the next few years and a number of Selenium-related projects were spawned, including Selenium IDE, Selenium Grid, and Selenium WebDriver. As of now, this increasingly powerful set of tools is essentially one fully coordinated test framework.
Selenium is one of the most widely used open-source Web UI (User Interface) automation testing suite.
Selenium can be used to automate functional tests. It can also be integrated with automation test tools for achieving continuous testing including Maven, Jenkins, and Docker. In order to help manage test cases and generate reports, Selenium is also integrated with tools such as TestNG and JUnit.
Reason behind Selenium naming:
The name Selenium originated from a joke that it’s developer Jason once cracked to his team. Another automated testing framework was made by Mercury Interactive was quite popular during Selenium’s development. Mercury Interactive is the company that originally developed QTP before being acquired by HP. Jason Huggins suggested the name Selenium because of it being a well-known antidote for Mercury Poisoning, and his team gladly accepted the idea.
Four Components of Selenium Platform:
Selenium is a powerful tool for controlling web browser through program. It is functional for all browsers, works on all major Operating Systems (OS) and its scripts are written in various languages i.e Python, Java, and C# etc. Selenium has been used in the industry by automation testers all around the world for a long time.
Not only is Selenium a collection of different tools but it rather had a number of software developers with some key software engineers making notable contributions to this selenium development project.
After realizing that the repetitious Manual Testing of their web application had become inefficient, Huggins developed a JavaScript Program that could control the web browser’s actions automatically. The software program was named as the “JavaScriptTestRunner.”
As the idea potentially helped automate other web applications, it’s developer made JavaScriptRunner an open-source web application and re-named it as Selenium Core.
There are four major components in the Selenium Platform including Selenium RC,Selenium IDE, Selenium WebDriver, and Selenium Grid.
I. Selenium Remote Control (Selenium RC):
All major Web Browsers are supported by Selenium Remote Control (Selenium RC). Commands are interpreted by this web tool for converting them into JavaScript. The scripts are then injected into the browser. Selenium RC is a server that accepts commands for the browser via HTTP and is written in Java. Selenium RC allows writing automated tests for a web application in any programming language. This makes better integration of Selenium in the existing unit test frameworks possible. Presently, Selenium project provides client drivers for PHP, Python, Ruby, .NET, Perl and Java for making writing tests easier.
The Java driver is also used with JavaScript via the Rhino engine. An instance of Selenium RC server is required for launching an Html test case. This means that the port must be different for each parallel run. However, only a single Selenium RC instance is required to run continuously for a Java/PHP test case.
Primarily, the whole application under test and the web server was required to be installed on their computers by testers using Selenium Core due to restrictions imposed by the same origin policy. A software engineer named Paul Hammant at ThoughtWorks created a server that acted as an HTTP proxy and was able to “trick” the browser into believing that the web application being tested and Selenium Core came from the same domain. This system came to be known as Selenium 1 or the Selenium Remote Control (Selenium RC).
II. Selenium IDE (Selenium Integrated Development Environment):
Selenium IDE is a simple record-and-playback featured tool that is only available for Firefox as an add-on. The Selenium IDE is a browser-plugin-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) tool. Recording, playback, and testing of user actions is facilitated by this component of the Selenium in the browser. It’s the best way for users to get a feel for the multiple things Selenium is able to do in software testing. Quick and simple test scripts can be created by the Selenium IDE for basic functional testing and bug hunting. The Selenium IDE project was redesigned quite recently and it now works on both Firefox and Chrome browsers.
Selenium IDE is the main tool in the Selenium Suite. It is a complete integrated development environment for Selenium tests.
Selenium IDE is implemented both as a Chrome Extension and a Firefox Add-On. Recording, editing and debugging of functional tests is carried out by this browser platform. Selenium IDE was previously little-maintained and known as the Selenium Recorder. It began being actively maintained in 2018. Scripts are recorded automatically and manually edited that provide autocompletion support and also enabling you to quickly move commands around. Selenese is a special test scripting language for Selenium and scripts are recorded in this language. The Selenese language helps provide commands to perform actions in a browser by clicking a link and selecting an option in order to retrieve data from the resulting pages.
Selenium IDE, a Firefox extension was created by Shinya Kasatani that could automate the browser through a record-and-playback feature by coming up with the idea of further increasing the speed in the creation of test cases. He donated it to the Selenium Project in 2006.
III. Selenium WebDriver (aka Selenium 2.0):
One of the most vital tools of the Selenium Suite is the Selenium WebDriver. This web tool does not require any manual processes like the Selenium Server. A direct communication between code and browser exists in this kind of tool. WebDriver is also referred to as “Selenium 2.0”. It improves and expands on Selenium Remote Control (SRC) and does what it says. Web browsers are driven by WebDriver at a lower level as compared to Selenium IDE.
Consisting of a set of APIs, Selenium 2.0 allows the tester to control the browser from an Operating System (OS) level which leads to greater efficiencies in complex automation setups. Headless browsers are supported by the Selenium 2.0 that are able to greatly speed up software testing. WebDriver is suitable for scalable, advanced, and more complex automation. Not only is WebDriver protocol currently W3C compliant but also in the upcoming Selenium 4 version. The older JSON Wire Protocol has been replaced by this version.
Selenium WebDriver is the platform that is a successor to Selenium RC. The Selenium WebDriver platform accepts commands that are sent in Selenese, or via a Client API and then sends them to a browser. This process gets implemented through a browser driver that is browser-specific, and which retrieves results by sending commands to a browser. Most browser drivers literally launch and access browser applications such as Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Microsoft Edge etc. A browser using the headless browser HtmlUnit is also stimulated by an HtmlUnit browser driver. A special server is not required by Selenium WebDriver for executing the tests. The WebDriver instead starts a browser instance directly and then controls it. Nonetheless, Selenium Grid is used with WebDriver for executing tests on remote systems. Native operating system level functionality is used by WebDriver instead of browser-based JavaScript commands for driving the browser wherever possible. This helps bypass issues with subtle differences between native and JavaScript commands that include the security restrictions as well.
In 2006, at a time when Web Applications and Browsers were becoming more restrictive and more powerful with JavaScript programs like Selenium Core, Simon Stewart was able to create the WebDriver. This tool was the first cross-platform software testing framework which controlled the browser from the Operating System (OS) level.
IV. Selenium Grid:
The last component of Selenium Suite is known as the Selenium Grid.
It is usually used for Parallel Testing. This web tool at times even supports the Distributive Testing Process.
Tests are allowed to use web browser instances running on remote machines by Selenium Grid server. One server acts as the hub with Selenium Grid. The hub is contacted by hub for obtaining access to browser instances. The hub has got a list of servers which provides access to browser instances or WebDriver nodes, and allows the use of these instances by the tests. Selenium Grid can run tests in parallel on multiple machines and also manage different browser configurations and browser versions centrally, instead of in each individual test. The ability of running tests on remote browser instances is useful for spreading the load of testing across several machines and running tests in browsers that run on different platforms or operating systems (OS). The latter is one specifically useful in those cases where not all the browsers to be used for testing are able to run on the same platform.
In an effort to address the need of minimizing test execution times, Patrick Lightbody was able to develop the Selenium Grid, initially calling the system “Hosted QA.” Selenium Grid was could capture Browser Screenshots during significant stages, and was also capable of simultaneously sending out Selenium commands to various machines.
With WebDriver being the core, in 2008, the Selenium Team merged WebDriver and Selenium RC to create a more powerful Software Tool known as Selenium 2. Selenium RC is still being developed in Maintenance Mode only. The entire efforts of the Selenium Project are currently being focused on Selenium 2 development.
Selenium Testing:
Multiple programming languages like Java, C#, Python etc can be used for creating Selenium Test Scripts. Testing done by using the Selenium Testing Tool (STT) is normally referred to as Selenium Testing.
The list of Selenium Software Testing Tools include:
Selenium Grid
Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
WebDriver
Selenium Remote Control (SRC)
Selenium for Automated Testing:
Selenium is an automated testing framework. Test scripts against different web browsers can be executed using this framework including Chrome, Safari and Firefox.
Types of Testing Using Selenium:
Selenium can be used to do many types of testing including smoke testing, sanity testing, UI testing, and regression testing etc.
Writing a Selenium Test:
Numerous coding languages are supported by the Selenium framework. A test script can be written using Ruby, C#, Java, Perl, Python, JavaScript, and PHP etc. A few statements or packages may be needed to be imported into your code. XPath in Selenium can also be used for finding objects.
Benefits of Selenium:
I. Transparency: Ensures transparency and agility across the cross-functional teams of SDLC process including the developers, quality assurance, operations, clients and the management teams.
II. Platform Independent: The time in writing test scripts by Software Testers for each platform to be tested is avoided because the principle of writing one test script and running it on any platform is followed.
III. Quickening TTM and TTD: Manual Software Testing is a very hectic, time consuming and uncertain process. Product delivery and time to market schedules are rarely missed by the use of an automated software testing process. Manual Testing also happens to increase the overall project costs. Avoiding the writing of test script for each platform separately by testers in Selenium saves precious time and also eliminates the regression testing process. All this not only helps quicken the TTM and TTD but also greatly optimizes testing time.
IV. Fostering Continuous Integration Efforts: The modern day Agile-Enablers of the Software Development Process are Continuous Delivery and Continuous Integration. Selenium acts as a catalyst to nurture the efforts of organizations in successfully implementing the Continuous Integration (CI) practice by automating the overall test process.
V. End-to-End Testing Visibility: The Selenium Platform provides a greater visibility in case of End-to-End Applications Testing.
VI. Reduction of Turnaround Time:
The testing teams are facilitated to automatically run multiple test cases in parallel with multi-browser platforms by the Selenium Framework. This not only ensures an extreme testing quality but also helps reduce the turnaround time.
VII. Integration With Other Tools: Selenium with Java is popular just like certain other available jars including Sikuli, Appium, and ExtentReports etc.
Selenium tool provides
Flexibility for testing teams is provided by Selenium tool for getting integrated with these jars and help in extending its functionalities to uncharted territories:
a. Graphs and reports are generated with “ExtentReports” by Selenium Integration that are used for providing a deeper insight to potential clients on the testing status.
b. Web applications involving videos and images can be tested through the integration of Selenium with “Sikuli”.
c. An integration of Selenium with Appium can achieve testing of web apps on Android or iOS platforms.
Benefits of Selenium:
I. Transparency: Ensures transparency and agility across the cross-functional teams of SDLC process including the developers, quality assurance, operations, clients and the management teams.
II. Platform Independent: The time in writing test scripts by Software Testers for each platform to be tested is avoided because the principle of writing one test script and running it on any platform is followed.
III. Quickening TTM and TTD: Manual Software Testing is a very hectic, time consuming and uncertain process. Product delivery and time to market schedules are rarely missed by the use of an automated software testing process. Manual Testing also happens to increase the overall project costs. Avoiding the writing of test script for each platform separately by testers in Selenium saves precious time and also eliminates the regression testing process. All this not only helps quicken the TTM and TTD but also greatly optimizes testing time.
IV. Fostering Continuous Integration Efforts: The modern day Agile-Enablers of the Software Development Process are Continuous Delivery and Continuous Integration. Selenium acts as a catalyst to nurture the efforts of organizations in successfully implementing the Continuous Integration (CI) practice by automating the overall test process.
V. End-to-End Testing Visibility: The Selenium Platform provides a greater visibility in case of End-to-End Applications Testing.
VI. Reduction of Turnaround Time:
The testing teams are facilitated to automatically run multiple test cases in parallel with multi-browser platforms by the Selenium Framework. This not only ensures an extreme testing quality but also helps reduce the turnaround time.
VII. Integration With Other Tools: Selenium with Java is popular just like certain other available jars including Sikuli, Appium, and ExtentReports etc.
Selenium tool provides
Flexibility for testing teams is provided by Selenium tool for getting integrated with these jars and help in extending its functionalities to uncharted territories:
a. Graphs and reports are generated with “ExtentReports” by Selenium Integration that are used for providing a deeper insight to potential clients on the testing status.
b. Web applications involving videos and images can be tested through the integration of Selenium with “Sikuli”.
c. An integration of Selenium with Appium can achieve testing of web apps on Android or iOS platforms.
Software testing is the process of evaluating and verifying that a software product or application does what it is supposed to do. The benefits of testing include preventing bugs, reducing development costs and improving performance.
Why is software testing important?
Consider Nissan having to recall over 1 million cars due to a software defect in the airbag sensor detectors. Or a software bug that caused the failure of a USD 1.2 billion military satellite launch. The numbers speak for themselves. Software failures in the US cost the economy USD 1.1 trillion in assets in 2016. What’s more, they impacted 4.4 billion customers.
Benefits of Software testing:
•Enhance Product Quality
•Enhancing the development process.
•Inspires Customer Confidence and Satisfaction
•Improve Security
•Determining the performance of the software
Types of Software testing:
Functional Testing: This type of testing verifies each function of an application or software. The tester verifies functionality with a specified set of requirements. So, the source code of a software or an application doesn’t play a major role in this case.
Non-Functional testing:
•Install testing. This type of testing is done to check if a product works according to expectations after installation.
•Recovery testing. This type testing is done to determine an application’s capacity to recover from hardware crashes or failures.
•Usability testing. This type testing is done to explore the end-user’s ease of use in terms of learning, operating, and preparing inputs and outputs.
•Compliance testing. This type of testing is done to determines the system’s compliance with external and internal standards.
Other Software Testing:
1-Black Box testing: In black box testing tester has same information like the end user . In this testing the tester has the least amount of information. The test don’t know about the structure of the product, its code, or logic. 2-White box testing : In this testing the tester has most of the information and it’s done to make the software better quality .
3-Grey-boxTesting: In this type of testing, the tester has partial information about the product. This type of testing is supportive to find out defect that the customer wouldn’t know about. For instance, you’ve designed a component to have a white shade but it has a yellow shade. The customer wouldn’t know that it’s a bug because they’d think that’s how it’s supposed to be. But your partial knowledge of the product would help you identify such bugs.
Fun Fact about Einstein: Einstein did not speak until the age of three.
Software Testing Life Cycle STLC:
Software testing is a sequence of specific activities conducted during the testing process to ensure software quality goals are met. STLC involves both verification and validation activities. Contrary to popular belief, Software Testing is not just a single/isolate activity, i.e. testing.
