What is Smoke Testing?

What is Smoke Testing?

Smoke testing, also known as “soak testing”, is a software testing technique that ensures the stability of an application by monitoring if it continues to work normally after being stressed for a prolonged period of time. Test cases are used to verify if user-acceptance criteria have been met while stress testing verifies if the software can handle peak usage. Soak testing helps you identify bugs and performance issues so that they can be fixed before the final release. It helps avoid last minute surprises, catch bugs early and reduce time to market. These benefits are achieved by combining both stress tests and smoketests into one exhaustive test suite that covers all probable usage scenarios of the product.

What is Difference between Smoke Testing and Stress Testing? #

Smoke testing is a subset of stress testing. The main difference between smoke testing and stress testing is that smoketesting is done to verify the normal functioning of the application, whereas stress testing is used to verify how well the application performs under high loads. Smoketesting is often used as a precursor to system testing to determine if the application is ready to be tested. It is used to test a limited set of functionality that verifies the application is ready to begin system testing. Smoketesting is used to test the entire application to verify that it is ready for system testing. Stress testing is done to determine if the application can handle high loads. It can be done to simulate different types of customer behaviour like the number of requests per second, number of concurrent users, etc. Stress testing is done to determine if the application can sustain high loads.

Steps to Perform Smoke Testing #

If you have recently completed the testing requirements outlined in the user experience design, you will find smoke testing to be an easy, albeit time-intensive, process. To perform smoketesting, follow these steps: –

Identify Test Cases – Before you start testing, make a list of the test cases that you will use to validate the system. Test cases are the things that you need to verify to ensure that everything is working as expected.

Test the most important functionality first – You want to start with the critical functionality that validates the functionality of the entire application.

Test the functionality from various user personas – Try to test the functionality from the perspective of different user personas. This includes different types of users, user roles and user proficiency.

Pros of Smoke Testing #

Smoke testing ensures that major features are fully functional – Smoke testing ensures that the most important features of the application are working. This is the first step toward full system testing and releasing the application to your users.

Smoke testing reduces the risk of defects – Smoke testing reduces the risk of defects in the application. Since defects are found early in the development lifecycle, they are much less expensive to fix than after the system has been deployed.

Smoke testing makes the development process more efficient – Smoke testing makes the development process more efficient because it gives the team a clear indication of which areas need more attention before the system can be fully tested.

Smoke testing helps find bugs before they can be fixed – Smoketesting helps find bugs before they can be fixed. If a defect is found in smoke testing, there is a good chance that it will still be found in system testing — and with more users — when the application is released to the public.

Cons of Smoke Testing #

Smoke testing can be time-consuming – While smoketesting is extremely important, it can also be time-consuming. The team will have to test each feature more than once to make sure that they are working correctly.

Smoke testing may identify false positives – There is a chance that smoketesting may identify false positives. This can happen if the team is using too much of a production-like environment to test the application. While a production-like environment is helpful in finding defects, it can also bring in false positives, which means defects that don’t actually exist.

Conclusion #

Smoke testing validates that the most important functionality of the application is working correctly. It is a crucial step to make sure that the application is ready for system testing, where the team is able to test all functionality. Since smoketesting is focused on finding major defects, it makes it easier to focus on fixing smaller bugs in system testing. This helps streamline the testing process and make the release date more realistic.

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