System Testing

Definition

System testing (a.k.a., validation testing) is the construction phase blackbox testing of an integrated application against its requirements.

Objectives

The typical objectives of system testing are to:

• Validate the application (i.e., to determine if it fulfills its requirements).
• Identify defects that are not efficiently identified during unit and integration testing.
• Determine the extent to which the system is ready for launch.
• Provide project status metrics (e.g., percentage of use case paths successfully tested).

Kinds of System Testing

• Functional Testing, which is the testing of the application against its operational requirements.
• Performance Testing, which is the testing of the application against its performance requirements.
• Load Testing, which is the testing of the application that attempts to cause failures involving how the performance of a system varies under normal conditions of utilization.
• Stress Testing, which is the testing of the application that attempts to cause failures involving how the system behaves under extreme but valid conditions (e.g., extreme utilization, insufficient memory inadequate hardware, and dependency on over-utilized shared resources).
• Reliability Testing, which is the testing of the application against its reliability requirements.
• Robustness Testing, which is the testing of the application that attempts to cause failures involving how the system behaves under invalid conditions (e.g., unavailability of dependent applications, hardware failure, and invalid input such as entry of more than the maximum amount of data in a field).
• Configuration Testing, which is the testing of the application under different hardware and software configurations to determine an optimal system configuration.
• Contention Testing, which is the testing of the application that attempts to cause failures involving concurrency.
• Availablity Testing, which is the testing of the application against its operational availability requirements.
• Portability Testing, which is the testing of the application against its portability requirements.
• Security Testing, which is the testing of the application against its security requirements.
• Operations Manual Testing is the system testing of an integrated blackbox [partial] application against the procedures in the operations manual to see if it can be operated by the system operator.
• System Usability Testing, which is the testing of the application against its usability requirements.

Guidelines

• Reuse system test cases from one kind of system testing to another so as minimize the total number of system test cases to be developed and maintained.
• System testing is a validation technique.