This question appears in Mumbai University > Software Testing & Quality Assurance Subject

Marks: 10 M

Year: Dec 2014

• A test case is a document, which has a set of test data, preconditions, expected results and post conditions, developed for a particular test scenario in order to verify compliance against a specific requirement.

• Test Case acts as the starting point for the test execution, and after applying a set of input values, the application has a definitive outcome and leaves the system at some end point or also known as execution post condition.

Typical Test Case Parameters:

• Test Case ID

• Test Scenario

• Test Case Description

• Test Steps

• Prerequisite

• Test Data

• Expected Result

• Test Parameters

• Actual Result

• Environment Information

• Comments

Example:

Let us say that we need to check an input field that can accept maximum of 10 characters. While developing the test cases for the above scenario, the test cases are documented the following way. In the below example, the first case is a pass scenario while the second case is a FAIL.

Objectives of testing:

It does work :

1. While implementing a program unit, the programmer may want to test whether or not the unit works in normal circumstances.

2. The programmer gets much confidence if the unit works to his or her satisfaction. The same idea applies to the entire system as well - once a system has been integrated, the developers may want to test whether or not the system performs the basic functions.

3. Here, for the psychological reason, the objective of testing is to show that the system works, rather than it does not work.

It does not work:

1. Once the programmer (or the development team) is satisfied that a unit (or the system) works to a certain degree, more test are conducted with the objective of finding faults in the unit (or the system).

2. Here, the idea is to try to make the unit (or the system) fail.

Reduces the risk of failure:

1. Most of the complex software systems contain faults, which cause the system to fail from time to time.

2. This concept of failing from time to time gives rise to the notion of failure rate.

3. Thus, a high level objective of performing tests is to bring down the risk of failing to an acceptable level.

Reduce the cost of testing:

The different kinds of costs associated with a test process include:

1. The cost of designing, maintain and executing test cases

2. The cost of analysing the result of executing each test case

3. The cost of documenting the test cases

4. The cost of actually executing the system and documenting it.

Therefore, the highest level of objective of performing tests is to produce low-risk software with fewer numbers of test cases.