Software Testing

Testing Internet Applications

Phan Thi Hong

Lecturer
Faculty of Information Technology
Van Lang University

© 2016
Lecture Learning Objectives
 Objectives
▪ Provide some of the basic concepts about testing
internet applications.
▪ Identify the difference between testing internet-
based applications and testing traditional
applications.

 Outcomes
▪ Understand the difference between internet-based
applications and traditional applications

▪ Know how to apply testing techniques to test

internet-based applications
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Outline
 Introduction and Background
▪ The Application Models

▪ Web Application Architectures

▪ The Differences Between Web-based and

Traditional Client-Server Systems

 Testing Internet Applications

▪ Web Testing Challenges

▪ Testing Strategies for Web Applications

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08 | Testing Internet Applications

8.1. Introduction & Background

8.1.1. The Application Models
Section Overview
 In this section, we will review the following:
▪ Application models: from the models for mainframe
systems, desktop PC systems, typical client-server
systems, to the models for web-based systems

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Guiding Questions

 How is a typical application model operated?

 What are differences between mainframe systems and

desktop PC systems? (components, characteristics,
operation)

 What are components of traditional client-server

systems? How are they operated?

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A Typical Application Model

HUMAN SW/HW

INPUT LOGIC/RULES FILE SYSTEMS

Data entries Manipulate data Read/Write/Store data
Data requests
USER Data rules
USER INTERFACE
OUTPUT
Database or file-based
Feedback system
Requested data

Figure 8.1 – A Typical Application Model

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 Application Model – Mainframe Sys.

HUMAN SW/HW

INPUT LOGIC/RULES FILE SYSTEMS

Data entries Manipulate data Read/Write/Store data
Data requests
USER Data rules
USER INTERFACE
OUTPUT
Database or file-based
Feedback system
Requested data

Dumb Terminal Echoing Text

Mainframe

Figure 8.2 – Mainframe systems

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Application Model – Desktop PC Sys.

HUMAN SW/HW

INPUT LOGIC/RULES FILE SYSTEMS

Data entries Manipulate data Read/Write/Store data
Data requests
USER Data rules
USER INTERFACE
OUTPUT
Database or file-based
Feedback system
Requested data

Desktop PC – Text or GUI

Figure 8.3 – Desktop PC systems

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Application Model – Client-Server Sys.

HUMAN SW/HW

INPUT LOGIC/RULES FILE SYSTEMS

Data entries Manipulate data Read/Write/Store data
Data requests
USER Data rules
USER INTERFACE
OUTPUT
Database or file-based
Feedback system
Requested data

Desktop PC – Text or GUI

Application Server DB Server
Figure 8.4 – Client-Server systems
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Application Model – Client-Server Sys.

Figure 8.5 – A Client-Server system on LAN

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Application Model – Web-based Sys.

Figure 8.6 – Typical architecture of a web-based system (e-commerce site)

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Application Model – Web-based Sys.

Figure 8.7 – Example of an order entry

application that retrieves and processes
information from several servers

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Distributed Application Architecture
 A distributed system is a software system in which
components located on networked computers
communicate and coordinate their actions by passing
messages.

 In a distributed architecture, components are grouped

into clusters of related services.

 Distributed architectures are used for both traditional

client-server systems and Web-based client-server
systems.
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Keep in mind that

software, not hardware, that defines clients

 It is

and servers

• Clients are software programs that

request services from other software
programs on behalf of end users.

• Servers are software programs that

offer services.

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 Section Questions

How is a typical application model operated?

What are differences between mainframe

systems and desktop PC systems? (components,
characteristics, operation)

What are components of traditional client-server

systems? How are they operated?
08 | Testing Internet Applications
8.1. Introduction & Background
8.1.2. Web Application
Architectures
Section Overview
 In this section, we will review the following:
▪ Historical perspective for web application
architectures
▪ What is a web application?
▪ Web application architectures of web 1.0, web 2.0
and web 3.0
▪ Design patterns

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Guiding Questions
 What are components of web-based systems? How
are they operated?

 What are advantages and disadvantages of web

applications compared with standalone applications?

 What are differences between web application

architectures of web 1.0, web 2.0, and web 3.0?

 What is a design pattern? Which design patterns can

be applied to web-based systems?
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Traditional Client-Server Systems

 A database access application typically consists of

four elements:
▪ User interface (UI) code

▪ Business logic code

▪ Data access service code

▪ Data storage

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Thin-client vs. Thick-client Systems

CLIENT SERVER

Logic/Rule
User interface
Components

Data Access
Components

Data storage

Figure 8.8 – Thin-client System

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Thin-client vs. Thick-client Systems

CLIENT SERVER

User interface

Logic/Rule Data Access

Components Components

Data storage

Figure 8.9 – Thick-client System

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 Section Questions
What are components of web-based systems? How are
they operated?

What are advantages and disadvantages of web

applications compared with standalone applications?

What are differences between web application

architectures of web 1.0, web 2.0, and web 3.0?

What is a design pattern? Which design patterns can be

applied to web-based systems?
08 | Testing Internet Applications

8.1. Introduction & Background

8.1.3. Web-based systems vs.
traditional client-server systems
Section Overview
 In this section, we will review the following:
▪ Distinguishing web-based systems and traditional client-server
systems

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 Web-based Sys. vs. Traditional C/S Sys.
Traditional Client-Server Systems
Client-side Applications
Clients of traditional C/S system are
platform-specific (Win 32/64, Linux,
etc.)
 A client application will be developed
and tested for that target platform.
Event Handling
It supports many kinds of event-
handling, such as mouse-over, mouse
single-click, mouse double-click or
mouse-click with a modifier key such as
Ctrl.
Web-based Client-Server System
Web-based client is running in the context of a
web browser.
There are many different web browsers and
many difference versions of the same browser.
 Web browser compatibility issues.
- It supports only single-clicking for navigation
and data submission, and mouse-over ALT
attribute for an alternate description of
graphic.
- It offers very limited keyboard event
support.
- It supports explicit submission model (one-
way request and submission model).
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Web-based Sys. vs. Traditional C/S Sys.
Traditional Client-Server Systems
Application Instance and Windows Handling
It supports multiple document
interface (MDI) or multiple windows
interface.
UI Controls
It supports many kinds of UI controls.
Web-based Client-Server System
The Web browser interface is flat and
nonlinear; therefore, it does not support
MDI.
- It does not support many kinds of
common UI controls.
- It needs extra effort to go beyond the
basic functionality. However, there will
be compatibility issues among different
browsers.
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Web-based Sys. vs. Traditional C/S Sys.

Traditional Client-Server Systems Web-based Client-Server System

Server-based Applications
- It is programs that have UI for user - Client can only interact with server-based
to interact with. applications to access functionality and
data via communication protocols,
- In contrast, to use a client
application programming interface (API),
application, an end-user must
and other interfacing standards.
explicitly launch the client
application and interact with it via - When a server-based application is
a UI. started, it's intended to stay up, waiting
to provide services to client applications
whether there is any client out there
requesting services.

Table 8.1 – Web-based Client-Server Systems vs. Traditional Client-Server Systems

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08 | Testing Internet Applications

8.2. Testing Internet Application

8.2.1. Web testing challenges
Section Overview
 In this section, we will review the following:
▪ Challenges that we have when testing web
applications
▪ Some examples for testing 3-tiers of web
applications

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Guiding Questions

 Which challenges should we concern when testing

web applications?

 How should we do to overcome these challenges?

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Web Testing Challenges – Examples

Large and varied user base

 The users of your web site
▪ posses different skill sets
▪ employ a variety of browsers
▪ and use different operating
systems or devices

Locales
 Some internationalization issues
▪ Language translation
▪ Time zone difference
▪ Currency conversion

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Web Testing Challenges – Examples

Business environment
 The tester must thoroughly understand
the structure of remote system, and
work closely with its owners and
developers to ensure security and
accuracy.

Security
 Since your site is open to the world,
you must protect it from hackers.

Testing environment
 Need to duplicate the production
environment.

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Web Testing Challenges – Examples
Presentation tier Business tier
Ensure fonts are the same Verify proper calculation of
across browsers sale tax and shipping
charges.
Confirm that all links point Ensure documented
to valid files or websites. performance rates are met
for response times and
throughput rates.
Verify that graphics are the Verify that transactions
correct resolution and size. complete properly.
Spell-check each page. Confirm that failed
transactions roll back
correctly.
Table 8.2 – Examples of Presentation, Business, and Data Tier Testing
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Data tier
Ensure database
operations meet
performance goals.
Verify that data are stored
correctly and accurately.
Verify that you can recover
using current backups.
Test failover or redundancy
operations.
Web Testing Challenges – Examples
Presentation tier Business tier Data tier
Have a copy editor check Ensure data are Test for proper data
grammar and style. collected correctly. encryption and security
(credit card and user’s
personal information, in
particular).
Check cursor positioning when Test backend data entry
page loads to ensure it is in the and management routines
correct textbox. for usability and accuracy.
Confirm that default button is
selected when the page loads.
Check for consistent and user-
friendly feedback on interactive
operations.
Check for business- or industry-
specific terms and style.
Table 8.2 – Examples of Presentation, Business, and Data Tier Testing
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 Section Questions

Which challenges should we concern when

testing web applications?

How should we do to overcome these

challenges?
08 | Testing Internet Applications
8.2. Testing Internet Application
8.2.2. Testing strategies for web
applications
Section Overview
 In this section, we will review the following:
▪ Testing strategies for web applications. Topics
include: testing strategies for presentation tier,
business tier, and data tier

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Guiding Questions
 What is an overall testing strategy for web
applications?

 Presentation layer testing: What is the testing

objective of this layer? What testing strategies for this
layer?

 Business layer testing: What is the testing objective

of this layer? What testing strategies for this layer?

 Data layer testing: What is the testing objective of this

layer? What testing strategies for this layer?
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Testing Strategies for Web Applications

 Developing a testing strategy for Internet-based

applications requires a solid understanding of the
hardware and software components that make up the
application.

 An overall testing strategy is that you should test

each tier independently before system testing
▪ Presentation Layer Testing

▪ Business Layer Testing

▪ Data Layer Testing

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Strategies for Presentation Layer Testing
Objective: Three major areas:
Find defects in the • Content Testing
GUI or front end of • Website Architecture
your application Presentation
• User Environment
Layer Testing

Testing Strategies
for
Web App.
Business Data Layer
Layer Testing Testing

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Presentation Layer – Content Testing

 Objective
▪ Find defects relating to human-interface elements
of a website.

 Why is it important?
▪ Providing grammatically correct, but inaccurate,
information harms your company’s credibility as
much as any other GUI defect.

▪ Inaccurate information may also cause legal

problems for your company.

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Presentation Layer – Content Testing
 What should you do for content testing?
▪ You need to search for defects in
• Overall aesthetics (screen layout, colors)

• Font type/size

• Graphic resolutions

• Default values

• Spelling

• And other features that directly affect the end-user

experience.

▪ Verify the accuracy of information on website

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Presentation Layer – Website Architecture

 Objective
▪ Test the website architecture by trying to find
navigational and structural errors.

 What should you test for website

architecture?
▪ You need to search for:
• broken links

• missing pages

• wrong files

• or anything that sends the user to the wrong area of the site.
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Presentation Layer – Website Architecture

 Where are the sources of defects?

▪ All a project team member needs to do is rename a
file, and its hyperlink becomes invalid.
▪ Similarly, if a graphic element is renamed or
moved, then a hole will exist in your Web page
because the file cannot be found.

 How should you do?

▪ You can validate your website’s architecture by
• creating a unit test that checks each page for architectural
problems.
• applying white-box testing techniques to validate the
navigation or many combinations of navigation events
among the web pages.
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Presentation Layer – User Environment
 Objective
▪ Find defects caused by
• the combination of browsers and operating system
• the incompatibility issues among different web browsers
and different versions of the same web browser as well.

 What are the causes of incompatibility issues?

▪ There are several different browsers on the market today, and
each behaves differently because most vendors enhance their
products in an effort to attract a loyal user base.

▪ Vendors often improve some feature of their browsers with

each release, which may or may not be compatible with older
versions.

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Presentation Layer – User Environment

 What should you do for browser-compatibility

testing?
▪ Test each browser configuration and different versions of the
same browser as well.

▪ Pay particular attention to browser-compatibility issues if you

use any of the following:
• ActiveX controls
• JavaScript
• VBScript
• Java applets
• HTML 5
• Adobe flash
• PHP

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 Strategies for Business Layer Testing

Strategies:
• Internal and external components Testing

• Performance Testing Presentation

• Data Validation Layer Testing
• Transactional Testing

Testing Strategies
for
Web App.
Business Data Layer
Objective: Layer Testing Testing
Focus on finding errors
in the business logic of
your Web application.

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Test Internal and External Components

 For the components developed in-house

▪ Firstly, create unit test and perform code review.
▪ Integrate the components into your system only after verifying
that they meet the design specifications and functionality
outlined in the specification document.

 For the components purchased from third party

▪ Develop a series of system tests to validate that they perform
correctly, independently of your application.
▪ Integrate these components only once you have determined
that they perform acceptably.

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Business Layer – Performance Testing
 Test to see whether the application meets
documented performance specifications (generally
specified in response times and throughput rates).

 Response time
▪ The length of time between sending of an inquiry from the
client, to the display of the last byte of the response at a user
terminal.

 Throughput
▪ The amount of work that can be performed by a computer
system or component in a given period of time.

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Business Layer – Data Validation

 Objective
▪ Test to detect
errors in data
collected from
customers.

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Business Layer – Transactional Testing

 Objective
▪ Test to uncover errors in transaction processing, which may
include credit card processing, e-mailing verifications, and
calculating sales tax.

 Why is it important?
▪ Your e-commerce site must process transactions correctly
100 percent of the time. No exceptions.

▪ Besides a tarnished reputation and lost customers, you may

also incur legalliabilities associated with failed transactions.

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Business Layer – Transactional Testing

 How should you do?

▪ You test the business layer from start to finish, trying to

uncover errors.

▪ You must test and validate that you can communicate

with the external services and that you receive correct
data back from them.

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Strategies for Data Layer Testing

Three major areas:

Presentation • Response Time Testing
Layer Testing • Data Integrity Testing

• Fault Tolerance and Recoverability

Testing

Testing Strategies
for
Web App.
Business Data Layer Objective:
Layer Testing Testing Focus primarily on testing
the DBMS that your app.
uses to store and retrieve
info.

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Data Layer Testing – Challenges

 One of the biggest challenges associated with

testing this layer is duplicating the production
environment.

▪ You must use equivalent hardware platforms and software

versions to conduct valid tests.

▪ In addition, once you obtain the resources, both financial

and labor, you must develop a methodology for keeping
production and test environments synchronized.

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Data Layer – Response Time Testing

 Objective
▪ Focus on identifying database operations that do not meet
performance objectives.

 How should you do?

▪ Ensure that individual database operations (select,

insert, update, delete) occur quickly so as not to
bottleneck other operations.

▪ You do by measuring the response time simply consists of

determining how long each operation takes.

▪ NOT to measure the speed of a complete transaction.

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Data Layer – Response Time Testing

 Challenges

▪ You MUST HAVE a test environment that matches what

you use in production; otherwise, you may get invalid test
results.

▪ Also, you MUST HAVE a thorough understanding of

your database system to make certain that it is set up
correctly and operating efficiently.

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Data Layer – Data Integrity Testing

 Objective
▪ Data integrity testing
strives to find defects
in how you store data.

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Data Layer – Data Integrity Testing

 Many factors can affect how the database stores

data.

▪ The data type and length can cause data truncation or

loss of precision.

▪ For date and time fields, time zone issues come into play.
• For instance, do you store time based on the location of the client, the
Web server, the application server, or the RDBMS?

▪ Internationalization and character sets can also affect

data integrity.
• For example, multi-byte character sets can double the amount of
storage required, plus they can cause queries to return padded data.

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Data Layer – Data Integrity Testing

 You should also investigate

the accuracy of the
reference tables (sales tax,
zip codes, time zone) used by
your application, and must
keep the information up to
date.

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Fault Tolerance & Recoverability Testing

 Robustness
▪ is the ability of a computer system to cope with errors during
execution.

 Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)

▪ is the predicted elapsed time between inherent failures of a
system during operation.
▪ can be calculated as the arithmetic mean (average) time
between failures of a system.

 Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)

▪ is a basic measure of the maintainability of repairable items.
▪ represents the average time required to repair a failed
component or device.
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Fault Tolerance & Recoverability Testing

 Objective
▪ Your goal when testing the database system robustness is to
try to exceed the numbers of MTBF and MTTR.

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Fault Tolerance & Recoverability Testing

 How should you do?

▪ Maximizing MTBF depends on the fault-tolerance level of

your database system.

• You might have a failover architecture that allows active transactions to

switch to a new database when the primary system fails.

• Another scenario is that you build fault tolerance into your application so
that a downed database affects the system very little.

▪ The types of tests you run depend on the architecture.

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Fault Tolerance & Recoverability Testing

 How should you do?

▪ The objective of recoverability testing is to create a scenario

in which you cannot recover that database.

▪ At some point, your database will crash, so you need to have

procedures in place to recover it very quickly.

• The planning for recovery begins in obtaining valid backups.

• If you cannot recover the database during recoverability testing, then you
need to modify your backup plan.

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Fault Tolerance & Recoverability Testing

 How should you do?

▪ A fault-tolerant database system may reside in multiple

locations connected over a private or shared network.

• If the local server fails, are the remote systems current, and can your
software connect to a remote system quickly?

• What happens if one or more network connections fail?

• What happens if a system failure occurs while data is being written?

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 Section Questions
What is an overall testing strategy for web applications?

Presentation layer testing: What is the testing objective

of this layer? What testing strategies for this layer?

Business layer testing: What is the testing objective of

this layer? What testing strategies for this layer?

Data layer testing: What is the testing objective of this

layer? What testing strategies for this layer?
Take Away

The best way to proceed testing

Internet-based applications is
to narrow your testing efforts
to specific areas.

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Take Away

Apply white-box approaches for

components developed in-
house and integrate them into your
system only after verifying that they
meet the design spec. and
functionality outlined in the spec.
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Take Away

Apply black-box approaches for

third-party components and
integrate them into your application
only once you have determined that
they perform acceptably.

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References
1. Hung Q. Nguyen, Testing Applications on the Web,
John Wiley & Sons, 2001: Chapter 2 & 5

2. Glenford J Mayers, Tom Badgett and Corey Sandler,

The Art of Software Testing, 3rd edition, John Wiley &
Sons, Inc., 2012: Chapter 10

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Questions & Answers

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