basics of software testing

Topics we will cover in this article:
- Application Testing
- Categories of Applications
- Application Testing Methodologies
- Application Testing Tools
- Software Test Plan
- Application Testing Cycles
- Application Testing – Best Practices

Application Testing is an activity that every software tester performs daily in his career. These two words are extremely broad in practical aspect. However, only the core and most important areas will be discussed here. The purpose of this article is to touch all the primary areas so that the readers will get all the basic briefing at a single place.

Categories of Applications

Whether it is small calculator software with only the basic arithmeticoperations, or an online enterprise solution; there are two categories of applications.
a. Desktop
b. Web

For desktop applications, testing should take into account the UI, business logic, database, reports, roles and rights, integrity, usability and data flow. For web applications, along with all these major areas; testers should give sufficient importance to performance, load and security of the application. So AUT is either desktop software or a website.