Day by day new tendencies and techniques appear in the IT sphere.
Accordingly, the QA/Software testing industry has to be extremely flexible to be able to integrate into all those new tendencies fastly and easily.
As a result over the years, QA/Software testing industry has changed a lot and there are new working technics and trends which are adopted by QA services provider companies to keep up with the times.
Before this article, we have only talked about 2 main testing types (Manual testing and Automation testing)to have a general idea of the QA industry.
Now, it’s time to go a bit deeper and explore more!
Among those testing trends, we can mention Cybersecurity testing, Codeless automation testing, Big Data testing, Blockchain testing, Security testing, Game testing, and AR/VR testing.
Tesvan as a QA service provider would like to share with you all the knowledge and experience gathered working in this industry.
So, now let’s go through each part and discuss them a bit in detail.
Cybersecurity/ Cybersecurity testing
Cybersecurity, also called IT security is the procedure of protecting essential systems and vulnerable information from any kind of attack (hacking).
Ensuring full cybersecurity means having a security strategy that would be able to cover all the below layers:
- Critical infrastructure security,
- Network security,
- Application security,
- Cloud security,
- Information security,
- End-user education,
- Disaster recovery
Types of cyber threats
Generally, cyber threats can be categorized as:
- Cybercrime: also called computer crime, includes illegal actions such as fraud, stealing identities, or Internat violence.
- Cyberattack: usually involves information gathering for political reasons
- Cyberterrorism: is often intended to generate massive panic of fear
Common cyber attacks
- Malware: Malware is malicious software created to break or damage a user’s computer.
- Ransomware: is another kind of threat that locks down files, data, or systems. Can make private or sensitive data accessible to the public.
- Phishing / social engineering: phishing scams, emails, or text messages are meant for gaining sensitive information about a company, such as login credentials or credit card data
- Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks: A DDoS attack aims to crash the network by generating artificial traffic
- Advanced persistent threats (APTs): Here an intruder penetrates a system and remains uncovered for a long time and steals sensitive data.
- Man-in-the-middle attacks: It is an attack, where the hacker makes connections with two parties (the victims) and sends messages between them to make them believe they are communicating with each other and thus steal data. There is no doubt that cybersecurity testing is essential.
Because even if you are a small or a medium-size business you have the same risk to be attacked as the other bigger and more powerful companies.
Cybersecurity testing gives us to understand where especially are our vulnerabilities and what kind of action we need to reduce any risk regarding our cybersecurity.
So, instead of waiting for attacks to fight then better be proactive and avoid all possible negative scenarios.
Being proactive means arranging the right and periodical testing procedures.
We can mention 2 main forms of cybersecurity testing:
- Penetration testing
- Vulnerability testing
Generally, the process of cybersecurity testing consists of the following steps:
- Cybersecurity audit
- Cybersecurity risk assessment
- Penetration test
- Red team assessment
- Bug bounties
Codeless automated testing
Nowadays in the world of automated testing, many companies deal with tools and frameworks that require less or even no code. Here we face the following terms: low-code, no-code, and codeless.
In fact, low-code, no-code, codeless, and scriptless terms explain the same phenomena.
It means dealing with tools that will allow users to create and execute tests without having any code under their hands. This approach will allow testers to create a test visually just based on any type of business logic which will make the software testing process much more accessible and easy for those who don’t have any coding skills. But even choosing codless automated testing coding knowledge may be needed to perform specific or more complex interactions.
At the end of the day testers and QA engineers ARE NOT developers and they don’t have to know to code as good as programmers do.
And which are the main benefits of codeless automated testing?
- It reduces time-wastage
- Software functionality can be evaluated and tested easily, without creating tests
- It is more cost-effective than traditional automation testing
- Tests are maintained and scaled easily
Top codeless automation tools:
- Katalon Studio
- Leapwork
- Ranorex studio
- Selenium IDE
- Perfecto
- AccelQ
Big Data testing
Big Data Testing can be defined as the process of checking and validating the proper functionality of Big Data Applications.
Big-Data gains its fame through its superiority in handling multiple formats of data which the traditional data processing units fail to handle. The data formats that big data can handle are as follows.
- Structured Data
- Semi-Structured Data
- Unstructured Data
The General approach of Big Data Application testing involves the following steps.
1. Data Ingestion
Data is first loaded from the source to Big Data System using extracting tools. The Storage might be HDFS, MongoDB, or any similar storage. Then, the loaded data is cross-checked for errors and missing values.
2. Data Processing
In this stage, the key-value pairs for the data get generated. Later, the MapReduce logic is applied to all the nodes and checked if the algorithm works fine or not. A data validation process takes place here to make sure the output is generated as expected.
3. Validation of the Output
At this stage, the output generated is ready to be migrated to the data warehouse. Here, The transformation logic is checked, the data integrity is verified and the key-value pairs at the location are validated for accuracy.
Blockchain testing
Blockchain is a software architecture that has the potential of growing and being a protestor in the industry. With time, with the continuously growing of blockchain systems, we face parallelly the risk of quality issues.
So blockchain testing is an unavoidable procedure, which demands high attention and resources.
While doing blockchain functionality testing its important to be focused on the following points:
- Block Size
- Chain Size
- Data transmission and
- Adding a block
Top blockchain testing tools:
- Ethereum Tester
- Brownie
- Truffle
- Embark
- Drizzle
- BitcoinJ
- Ganache
Game/Vidoe game testing
What is game testing?
Game testing is one of the essential phases of the game development process.
Its main purpose is to check whether the game is ready to be launched or not. In other words, Game Testing is a software testing process done to ensure testing and quality control of video games. The main goal of Game testing is to identify and uncover any possible defects and bugs in a video game and thus improve its quality and stability. Game testing represents a step in the game development process that helps to ensure the video game to be distributed is bug-free.
Game testing VS Software testing
1. Game Testing Is Complex: It is not easy to be a game tester, because it has a lot of complexities. To ensure quality, Game Testing requires more concentration, diligence, and attention to detail.
2. Software Testing requires Automation: Unlike Game Testing which expects mostly manual effort, software test cases utilize some automation processes as well.
3. More Teams involved In Game Testing Projects: Because of all the manual effort concentrated in Game Testing, the process usually requires more hands. Software test projects may use fewer human recourses as most of the operations can be automated. Besides a software tester can be engaged in multiple projects concomitantly. However, conditioned by the demanding role of each team member in Game Testing, they cannot be requested to handle multiple projects simultaneously.
4. More Teamwork In Software Testing Projects: If we compare Software and game testing processes, in forts one there is evidently more teamwork than on the second one. Usually, software testers work in a team, thoroughly collaborating for getting expected results. Whereas for game testers there is no need for so much interaction with other teammates.
5. Software Testing Requires More Expert Knowledge: As many processes should be automated there is a need for good specialists with profound knowledge of current QA trends and tools, in other words, to be an expert on their work. As for game testing here, each team member of a Game Testing project is generally required to be focused on a particular angle in the game only, thus is no need to master an enormous number of tools.
Some mostly-used game testing Techniques
Combinatorial Testing:
This is an experimental design method that is used for commercial software testing and for generating test cases. Involving combinatorial testing to game testing increases test execution efficiency, delivers better quality, decreases cost, and better stage containment.
Key Features
- Almost every combination of values of the parameters are covered using this test type
- Determinate separate features that can be varied either in data or configuration
- Systematically develops combinations for testing
- Here the parameters are picked from game functions, features, events, settings, play options, characteristics, etc.
Clean Room Testing:
This is a software development procedure realized to design gaming software with a certifiable level of reliability.
Key Features
- Programming starts after the standard specification
- No programmer testing approach
- This technique integrates mathematical logic, design improvement, and statistical reasoning during test case generation and testing process
- The main purpose of this process is to deliver minimal defect software
Functionality Testing:
Functionality testing means the method to specify bugs or errors in a game that may impact the user experience.
Key Features
- Determines whether the application is working according to the specifications.
- It is a complex testing method that belongs to the black-box testing technique.
- Takes more time to perform as testers catch game playing issues, graphic issues, audio-visual issues, etc.
- Validates whether installation goes smoothly, the app works in minimized mode, etc.
Compatibility Testing:
This is used to see whether a game is acting appropriately or not concerning the hardware, graphics, and software configuration that the device is constructed with. It is one of the essential mobile app testing services that check if a game can run on specific devices.
Key Features
- Checks whether the user interface of the application is appropriate with the screen size of the device and confirms high quality
- Checks whether the text is readable for all users
- This testing guarantees that the product meets all essential requirements set by the developer and the end-user
- Checks real compatibility between different testing environments
- Verifies resilience and solidity of the software.
Tree Testing:
This type of testing is similar to usability testing used to manage the test cases. It also allows selecting the proper collection of tests for the given set of code changes.
Key Features
- Can be also executed in advance of designing page structures or navigation menus
- Allows cheap investigation, refinement of the menu categories, tags, etc.
- Enhances the general understanding of the involved features in the game
Regression Testing:
Regression testing is done to retest the untouched parts of the software. Here test cases are re-checked to explore the working of the previous functions of the app works sufficiently and whether new changes have not introduced any new errors or vulnerabilities.
Key Features
- Re-run the previously performed tests
- Helps to compare the previous results with current results and indicate errors if any
- Critical factor for quality controls
- Save time by catching bugs at the starting phase itself
- Can be run as a functional test to confirm the overall usability of the end product
Ad hoc Testing:
This is quite a random testing method generally used to break down the system. Testers randomly test the app without test cases or any documents.
Key Features
- Do not follow any structured form of testing, it’s haphazardly done on any section of the app
- Mainly done to discover defects using a random checking
- This is complete during the testing approach “Error Guessing”
Load Testing:
It is a type of performance testing to define the performance of a system under real-time loads. Load testing shows the reaction of an app when numerous users use the app simultaneously.
Key Features
- Determine whether the recent infrastructure is acceptable for the smooth running of the game
- Check sustainability of the app with extreme user load
- Define the number of users an app can sustain and its scalability rate to support more users
Play Testing:
Play testing is the method of game testing by playing the game to explore non-functional parts like fun factors, difficulty levels, balance, etc. Here a specified group of users plays the unfinished versions of the game to check the workflow.
Key Features
- It is an essential part of game design and is used generally n PC games and character-playing games
- It is more about considering the game rather than the facts
- The main drive is to check whether the game works in a well-structured manner.
Game Metrics in Game Testing every tester must know
DAU/MAU: (Daily active users/monthly active users): This shows the proportion of users who play every day over the number of monthly active users.
Session: Each time a user opens the app, that measures as a session.
Download Rank: This shows the rate of the game in an app store recording monthly downloads.
Retention: To calculate this matrix we different the users into units based on the day the application was downloaded.
Performance metrics: This matrix shows the performance of online games.
AR/VR technology testing
Augmented reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are some kind of “bridge” connecting the digital and physical worlds.
Due to AR/VR, we can take any information and content visually, in the same way, we can take them in the real world.
AR enlarge immediately the ways our devices can help us with everyday activities like searching for information, shopping, or even expressing ourselves.
And VR lets us experience what it’s like to go anywhere — from the nearest crossroad to any other planet.
Why do we need AR/VR testing?
First of all, we need to make sure that AR & VR app operates flawlessly across devices and platforms as well as ensure that UX and UI are user-centric which is an important point here.
Ar/VR testing is done also to protect sensitive user data from any possible cyberattack.
And finally, testing helps to understand all the strengths and weaknesses of the product and helps easily find the aspects which need to be improved.
The main testing approaches for AR/VR testing
- Cross-platform testing
- Interactivity testing
- Usability testing
- Hardware testing
- Performance testing
- Security testing
To get good results:
- use real devices in the testing process
- involve interactive teams
- not only find and fix the bugs but uncover the path to a better product
Conclusion
As we can see to stay competitive in the QA industry, software testing companies need to stay updated on the trends and new techniques that will be hazing up in the market. The more flexible they are the higher their productivity is, which will lead them to more prospective collaborations and projects.
Tesvan can be surely considered a competent and flexible QA service provider because we are open to any new testing trend. Our specialists are ready to easily integrate new testing approaches and properly respond to the market demand.
