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Dynamic Testing

In this section, we are going to understand Dynamic testing, which is done when the code is executed in the run time environment.

And we also learn about Dynamic testing, why we use it, how to perform it, what are a different technique for Dynamic testing, various tools for Dynamic Testing.

Introduction to Dynamic Testing

Dynamic testing is one of the most important parts of Software testing, which is used to analyse the code’s dynamic behavior.

The dynamic testing is working with the software by giving input values and verifying if the output is expected by implementing a specific test case that can be done manually or with an automation process.

The dynamic testing can be done when the code is executed in the run time environment. It is a validation process where functional testing [unit, integration, system, and user acceptance testing] and non-functional testing [Performance, usability, compatibility, recovery and security testing] are performed.

As we know that Static testing is a verification process, whereas dynamic testing is a validation process, and together they help us to deliver a cost-effective quality Software product.

Why do we need to perform Dynamic Testing?

We can easily understand how to implement dynamic testing during the STLC [Software Testing Life Cycle] if we consider the characteristics accessible by dynamic testing.

Using dynamic testing, the team can verify the software’s critical features, but some of those can be left without any assessment. And they can also affect the functioning, reliability, and performance of the software product.

Hence, we can perform Dynamic testing to fulfill the various below aspects:

• We will perform dynamic testing to check whether the application or software is working fine during and after installing the application without any error.
• We can perform dynamic testing to verify the efficient behavior of the software.
• The software should be compiled and run if we want to perform dynamic testing.
• Generally, Dynamic Testing is implemented to define the dynamic behavior of code.
• The team implements the code to test the software application’s performance in a run-time environment during the dynamic testing process.
• It makes sure that the concurrency of the software application with the customer’s potentials, needs and the end-user.
• It is an operative technique to measure the effect of several environmental stresses on the software application like network, hardware

Characteristic of Dynamic Testing

For understanding the fundamental of the software testing techniques, we have to learn their attribute and several other components. Hence, following are some of the important characteristics of dynamic testing:

• It is implemented throughout the validation stage of software testing.
• Dynamic Testing is done by performing the program.
• Both functional and non-functional testing include in dynamic testing.
• In Dynamic testing, we can easily identify the bugs for the particular software.
• It helps the team in validating the reliability of the software application.
• Unlike static testing, the team implements the software’s code to get expected outputs in dynamic testing.
• Dynamic testing is performed directly on the software application as compare to other testing techniques.
• Dynamic testing is a more formal testing approach for different testing activities such as test execution, coverage consideration, reporting and test case identification.

Dynamic testing Process

Generally, dynamic testing follows a set process when the approach and test implementation performances are decided, and the team can move to execute the different testing activities.

With the help of this process, the team can find any irregularity from the approaches and strategies and help us display all the testing steps.

In the STLC, the process of Dynamic Testing involves different functions. And all the functions in the dynamic testing process rely on the conclusion of the earlier task in the testing process.

The Dynamic testing process will complete in the following steps:

• Test case design
• Test environment step-up
• Test case execution
• Test analysis and evaluation
• Bug Reporting

The actual Dynamic Testing Process begins from Test Case Design in the software testing life cycle. Now, we discuss each step one by one to get complete knowledge of the dynamic testing process.

Step1: Test Case Design

In the first step of the dynamic testing process, the teams will design the test cases. Here, we are creating those test cases that depend on the requirements and scope of testing established before the start of the project.

In this step, we can originate the test conditions, obtain the test cases, extract the coverage Items, and identify those features that need to be tested.

Step2: Environment Setup

In the test environment phase, we will make sure that the testing environment should always be parallel to the production environment because the testing is implemented directly on the software product.

In this step, the dynamic testing process’s main objective is to install the test environment, which helps us succeed in the test machines.

Step3: Test Execution

Once we successfully install the test environment, we will execute those test cases prepared in the primary stage of the dynamic testing process.

Step4: Analysis & Evaluation

After executing the test cases, we will analyse and evaluate the outcomes derived from the testing. And we will compare those outcomes with the expected results.

If expected and actual results are not the same according to executing, we will consider those test cases as fail, and log the Bug in the bug repository.

Step5: Bug Reporting

After analyzing the test cases, we will be reported and recorded any bugs or defects between the actual result and expected result to the concerned person. And the concerned person will make sure that the issue has been solved and delivering a quality product.

Example of Dynamic Testing

Let us take one sample example where we understand how dynamic testing will woks.

So, for this, we will understand the login module of any application, such as www. Twitter.com.

Suppose we want to create one new account with a secure password, so we need to follow some pre-defined rules in the password field.

And the password should have eight characters long, capital letters and at least one special character.

If we are testing this functionality, we would take all the input conditions to test this and then verify the output.

We can also put the non-working constraints, such as input a 4-character password, and validate if there is an error occurred or not.

Types of Dynamic testing

Dynamic testing divided into two different testing approach, which are as follows:

• White-box testing
• Black-box testing

Both the testing techniques will help us execute the dynamic testing process efficiently as they play an important role in verify the performance and quality of the software.

Let’s understand them one by one in detail and also see the below diagram of it:

White-box testing

The word white box is used to describe the core perspective of the system. The developers will perform the white box testing, where they will test every line of the program’s code.

When the developers perform the White-box testing and then send the software application to the testing team, the testing team will do the black box testing, validate the application as well as the requirements. The white-box testing is further divided into data flow/control testing.

Data flow Testing

The data flow testing is used to identify the program’s test paths as per the settings of descriptions and uses of variables in the program. And it does not relate to data flow diagrams.

Black-box testing

The black-box testing is a testing technique where the test engineer selects a module and gives an input value to observe its functionality and analysis of whether the function is giving the expected output or not. If the function produced the correct output, then the particular function will be marked as pass.

To perform black-box testing, the test engineer should have specific knowledge about the software’s requirement rather than programming knowledge of the software.

And then, they can develop the test cases to check the correctness of the software’s functionality.

Black-box testing is further classified into two types, which are as follows:

• Functional testing
• Non-function testing

Functional testing

Functional testing is one of the most important parts of black-box testing. It mainly focuses on application specification rather than the actual code, and the test engineer will test the program rather than the system.

The functional testing is used to validate the software application’s functionality, whether the function is working as per the requirement specification.

In functional testing, each module has been tested by giving the value, determining the output, and verifying the actual output with the expected value.

The functional testing is classified into four different type of testing, which are as follows:

• Unit testing
• Integration testing
• System testing
• User acceptance testing

Unit testing

• The unit testing is the first level of functional testing to perform any testing on the software application.
• We will perform the unit testing whenever the application is ready and given to the Test engineer. He/she will start checking every component of the module or application independently or one by one. And this process is known as components testing.
• The primary objective to perform unit testing is to test the correctness of remote code and validate the unit components with their performance.

Integration testing

• When we have successfully done the unit testing on the specific software, we will go for the integration testing. The integration testing will help us to combined individual units and tested as a group. And it is the second levelof functional testing.
• When all the components or modules are working independently, we will check the data flow between the dependent modules, which is known as integration testing.
• The developers and the test engineer perform the integration testing. And the main purpose of the integration is to identify the faults in the interaction between the integrated units.

System testing

• System testing is used to check the end-to-end flow of an application or the software as a user.
• System testing is also known as end-to-end testing as the testing environment is similar to the production environment.
• In the third level (system testing) of functional testing, we go through all the necessary modules of an application and check if the end features or the end business works fine, and test the product as a whole system.

User acceptance testing

• The user acceptance testing is performed to certify the system according to requirements. The customer or client does it before accepting the final product.
• In other words, we can say that the UAT is done by the customer (domain expert) for their satisfaction and check whether the application is working according to given business scenarios and real-time scenarios.
• It is the last level of functional testing, which is execute before releasing the software to the market or production environment where two or more end-users will involve.

Non- Functional testing

Another part of black-box testing is non-functional testing. It is used to test non-functional constraints like load test, reliability, performance, and software accountability.

The main objective of performing the non-functional testing is to test the software system’s reading speed according to the non-functional parameters because these parameters are never tested before the functional testing.

Non-functional testing plays a vital role in customer satisfaction while testing the software or the application.

It reduces the risk of production and related costs of the software, and it provides a thorough knowledge of product behavior and used technologies.

Furthermore, the non-functional testing is divided into various parts, which can be performed at the test level.

• Performance testing
• Usability testing
• Compatibility testing
• Recovery testing
• Security testing

Let’s understand them in details one by one:

Performance Testing

• The performance testing is the most importantly used type of non-functional
• Once the software is stable and moved to the production, and it may be accessed by multiple users concurrently, we will do performance testing.
• The performance testing is testing where we check the behavior of an application by applying some load.
• As we know it is non-functional testing, which doesn’t mean that we always use performance testing when the application is functionally stable; only then we go for performance testing.

Usability Testing

• In usability testing, we will check the user-friendliness, efficiency, and accuracy of the software application.
• If we are using usability testing, it ensures that the developed software is easy to test while using the system without facing any problem and makes end-user life easier.

Compatibility testing

• The next type of non-functional testing is compatibility testing, which is used to check the functionality of an application on different software, hardware platforms, network, and browsers.
• The compatibility testing is not performed for all the applications; we will use the compatibility testing only for those applications where we don’t have control over the platform used by users.

Recovery testing

• In recovery testing, we can verify how well a system can recover from hardware failures and crashes.
• It reproduced the failure modes or essential producing failures in a controlled environment.
• The recovery testing is performed to confirm that a system is fault-tolerant and can improve well from failures.

Security testing

• The security testing is used to discover the weaknesses, risks, or threats in the software application and help us stop the nasty attack from outsiders and ensure our software applications’ security.
• The main purpose of security testing is to identify all the possible uncertainties and vulnerabilities of the application so that the software does not stop working.

Advantages and disadvantages of Dynamic Testing

From detecting and evaluating several bugs and errors in the software to verifying the software’s performance, dynamic testing provides serval benefits to the users and the testing team.

However, we have various advantages of dynamic testing as well as some disadvantages.

Therefore, below we listed some of the advantages and disadvantages of dynamic testing:

Advantages

Following are the advantages of dynamic testing:

• It validates the performance of the software application.
• The usage of dynamic testing ensures the reliability and constancy of the software product.
• It can automate with the help of tools that detect the problematic and complex bugs in the testing process, which cannot be covered through static Analysis.
• It helps the testing team to identify the weak areas of the run-time environment.
• The most important benefit of using dynamic testing over static testing is the relatively higher number of bugs can be found.
• As compared to static testing, dynamic testing requires a smaller number of meetings at the planning level of testing.
• It implements the software, end to end, and delivers Bug-free software.
• It becomes an essential tool for identifying any security threats.
• In dynamic testing, we can detect the problematic bugs which may have escaped the review processes.
• It also identifying those bugs which cannot be noticed by static testing.
• Dynamic testing can also find security threats, which ensure a better and secure application.

Disadvantages

Following are drawbacks of dynamic testing:

• It is a time-consumingprocess as it implements the software application or code, which needs a massive resource.
• The dynamic testing process is a bit costlieras it increases the budget of the software.
• The dynamic testing needs more human resources to complete the task, which makes its implementation costlier.
• Generally, dynamic testing is executed after the coding phase is completed, and therefore, the bugs are identified later in the life cycle.

Overview

In the dynamic testing section, we have learned the following topics:

• After understood the dynamic testing above, we can easily say that the importance of dynamic testing is massive in the software testing life cycle (STLC).
• Dynamic testing is used to perform the dynamic behavior of the code.
• We have understood the process of dynamic Testing and the various types of dynamic testing.
• In dynamic testing, we can directly implement the software tests to verify the functional performance, behavior, reliability, and other significant features of the software.
• We have understood the advantages and disadvantages of dynamic testing.

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