Smoke Testing is a testing technique that is inspired from hardware testing, which checks for the smoke from the hardware components once the hardware's power is switched on.

i) In Software testing context, smoke testing refers to testing the basic functionality of the build.

ii) If the Test fails, build is declared as unstable and it is NOT tested anymore until the smoke test of the build passes.

Features of smoke testing are :

i) Identifying the business critical functionalities that a product must satisfy.

ii) Designing and executing the basic functionalities of the application.

iii) Ensuring that the smoke test passes each and every build in order to proceed with the testing.

iv) Smoke Tests enables uncovering obvious errors which saves time and effort of test team.

v) Smoke Tests can be manual or automated. Sanity testing, a software testing technique performed by the test team for some basic tests. The aim of basic test is to be conducted whenever a new build is received for testing. The terminologies such as Smoke Test or Build Verification Test or Basic Acceptance Test or Sanity Test are interchangeably used; however, each one of them is used under a slightly different scenario.

vi) Sanity test is usually unscripted, helps to identify the dependent missing functionalities. It is used to determine if the section of the application is still working after a minor change.

vii) Sanity testing can be narrow and deep. Sanity test is a narrow regression test that focuses on one or a few areas of functionality.