Levels in Software Testing

Testing levels, or Levels of Testing, are a procedure for locating defective areas while preventing errors in development life cycle stages. This procedure or these levels of testing assist developers in maintaining software quality while ensuring that the software is free of defects or bugs.

Levels of Testing in Software Testing

Unit Testing
Integration Testing
System Testing
Acceptance testing

Unit Testing

Unit testing is the first level of testing. This testing is the most basic type of testing done by the developers before handing the software/product to the testing team. The main objective of unit testing is to isolate each component of the software and then perform tests to illustrate that every component is accurately meeting the requirements and delivering the expected output.

Advantages of Unit Testing

Here are some of the advantages of unit testing:
  • It helps detect bugs/defects earlier and preserves both time and money.
  • Detects regression bugs (It is a bug that is only found once and unless the software/product is released or in production.)
  • It helps to understand the behavior of the code.
  • The cost of conducting unit testing is low.

Disadvantages of Unit Testing

Here are some of the disadvantages of unit testing, such as:
  • Writing test cases takes time.
  • Unit testing is incapable of detecting all errors.
  • GUI code testing must be performed correctly, as it will be challenging to test the software’s graphical user interface using unit testing.

Integration Testing

Integration testing is the second level of testing. The testers, rather than the developers, mainly conduct this testing. This testing can be performed manually or using integration tools like Selenium. Integration testing is software testing in which individual software components (modules) are logically integrated (combined) and tested as a group. The main objective of integration testing is to verify whether individual modules when combined (integrated), work correctly or not as a group.

Advantages of Integration Testing

Here are some of the advantages of integration testing:
  • Increases test coverage.
  • Offers a higher level of reliability.
  • Aids in the identification of integration issues between modules.
  • It helps to ensure that the integrated components (modules) work properly before proceeding to the next level of testing: system testing.
  • Bugs discovered at this level are more uncomplicated to resolve than those found at later levels of testing.

Disadvantages of Integration Testing

Here are some of the disadvantages of integration testing, such as:
  • It can be challenging to perform in comparison to system testing.
  • Testing the integration between the various connected modules takes a long time and a lot of resources.
  • It necessitates the creation of stubs and drivers, which, if not done correctly, can result in insufficient testing.
  • Lower-level modules need to be adequately tested.
  • The test output is difficult to observe.

System Testing

System testing is the third level of testing. This level of testing assists you in identifying bugs and challenges while ensuring that the software will meet all specific requirements. This testing level ensures that the software/product meets stipulated requirements and runs as smoothly as possible in its operating environment.

Advantages of System Testing

Here are some of the advantages of system testing:
  • Covers complete end-to-end software testing.
  • Tests both the system software architecture and business requirements.
  • Assists in resolving post-production issues and bugs.

Disadvantages of System Testing

Here are some of the disadvantages of system testing, such as:
  • It requires a lot of time to test the entire framework.
  • Increases the testing cost and the effort involved, as business requirements and software architecture must be considered when conducting tests.

Acceptance Testing

Acceptance testing is the last and final level of testing. This level of testing is broad in scope, ranging from simply finding spelling and cosmetic errors to discovering bugs that might produce a significant error in the software.Acceptance testing is a type of software testing that determines whether or not the software should be released to the public.

Advantages of Acceptance Testing

Here are some of the advantages of acceptance testing:
  • Identifies problems with new products before they reach users
  • Allows the clients to test the features of the software
  • Increases satisfaction and reliability as client checks the software themself.
  • It helps the client to understand the target audience in a better way after analyzing the data gathered using acceptance testing.

Disadvantages of Acceptance Testing

Here are some of the disadvantages of acceptance testing, such as:
  • Significant resources and planning are required.
  • You have no say in which test cases are used.
  • It is challenging to assess test progress.

In this Software Testing Tutorial, we will learn about the levels in software testing. There are four levels of testing in software testing and the levels of testing question should not be confused with Types of software testing as there are many types of software testing but only 4 levels of software testing.

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