Software Testing Tools: A Complete Guide to Smarter Testing

Let’s think for a minute about a very small task in the current project you are working on. The developers have pushed their code for testing. Testers now start the action by testing the smaller parts of the code. This is tough because to execute this successfully, you might have to read the code and understand the smaller parts. This is a developer’s job.

Next, you move on to test performance and load capabilities by hit and trial. It takes time, but you find the threshold values eventually. More specific testing paradigms follow in the upcoming days.

Finally, you conclude and convey the bug to the manager, who then assigns it to a specific team member. The progress of this bug goes back and forth with frequent updates and more follow-up bugs, creating miscommunications within the development and testing team. As a result, it wastes a lot of time.

This is the story of just one project or sprint. What happens when we are floating around lots of sprint data, features, and customer-related bugs? It is just a matter of time before we realize that time is getting wasted and project costs are building up much more than anticipated. Hence, we look back to a few tools that help us in various testing departments and eliminate human errors by ensuring the performance is checked at every spot during the execution.

This post explores these software testing tools, focusing on the available software tools and scenarios where they fit perfectly for execution.

The first type of software testing tool we mention is the unit testing tool because it is the first type of inspection our software goes through.

Unit testing tools help perform unit testing, which is testing smaller pieces (units) of code. These pieces are often aimed at a specific feature or a special condition that may or may not resolve a bug. For instance, unit testing can test for validations when the “Name” field on the form contains numbers as input.

Unit testing is important because it works on a micro level of the software. When this is done, there is less chance that an important part of the code is overlooked. Every component undergoes tests which ultimately result in quality software.

Due to their nature, unit testing is often considered work done by the developers rather than the tester. This is achieved when the developer writes the feature or resolves the bug. They run the tests to verify that the tests validate the code.

In the next run, when another developer goes through the same cycle, they run the previous developer’s tests along with their own to ensure that the software is intact and ready to be sent to the testers.

It may look similar to this screen when a developer runs the unit tests on their code:

This complete process is taken care of by unit testing tools that provide features such as mocking in PyUnit, helping developers to test the software smoothly.

The following tools may help you get started in your unit testing journey:

Integration testing tools focus on integrated pieces of code and testing a complete connected system.

The previous tool's expertise stops on a micro level i.e. on a fixed and small portion of the software. For example, if I talk about an eCommerce website, a cart is a feature of the complete web application.

We can either perform unit testing on the working of the cart or a specific feature of carts, such as using wallets during checkouts, etc. But is there a guarantee in unit testing that our checkout system will work for the end-user if it passes unit tests? Well, that’s generally not the case.

A small feature may work when dummy data (which is exactly the same as the real data) is fed through unit tests. But when an actual user works on the system, there are a lot of scenarios that you might not have prepared for or have tested for. Such bugs are pointed out in integration tools.

Integration tools, as their name suggests, work on the integrated software. The integrated software is the one that combines each of the units (small features) into the actual big product. This is done after the unit tests and explores the bugs related to communications between codes, data flows, network connections, etc.

Integration testing starts with a single point in the application. So, if the tester is testing an eCommerce application, it is safe and simple to assume the starting point as the landing page. Next, we move on to different components associated with this stage. Since it is not usability testing, we cannot roam around thinking that somewhere we will hit a bug in our expedition.

To understand the connected components, understand the products technically and from a business point of view. Then you will know what other stages are and what they expect from the current stage. Then, you move to the next stage and repeat the same thing here too. This is to be done until you reach the final stage, which in our example would be payment success/failure.

The following tools may help you get started in your integration testing journey:

The load testing tool helps identify the load threshold of the system, helping build a scalable system.

Recently a cricket match was watched live on Disney+ Hotstar by 16 million people. This is 16 million requests sent concurrently. Such events are common around the globe when a special event occurs. For example, when a FIFA world cup final is streamed online in football-supporting countries. Or when the Black Friday sale is opened at midnight in the USA.

Succeeding with such events as a business is extremely necessary because bad word of mouth spreads like fire. Since you are not the only one out there providing such services, you may lose a lot of business and money.

Load testing ensures that whenever such an event occurs, it is well managed and there are no hiccups.

The best way to conduct this test is to put a load on the system. What kind of load should be put depends on the type of system you have designed.

For instance, if you are looking to stream a live telecast, why not start with testing if your system can withstand 10 million subsequent requests for live streaming? Yes? Try for 20 million.

No? Try for 15 million and so on. Include this in your report, which is then reviewed to check and verify the expectation of clients or management. If you expect 15 million users and your threshold is 15 million, that will not work.

For such a number, the threshold should be slightly higher for backups, keeping a margin for additional users and not putting 100% load on the servers.

This testing tool is extremely important if your business can demand such a thing in the future.

The following tools may help you get started in your load-testing journey:

UI Testing tools work on the user interface of the application. They ensure that the user interface looks and behaves as per the expectations.

The user interface of an application is the first thing a user interacts with. So, technically, even before they can applaud your backend skills, they need a user interface to reach that point. What if one button goes out of the viewport? Can we expect the user to scroll the page horizontally every time? Or what if the contrast of two elements is such that one element gets overshadowed by the other? Such issues with the user interface can prove costly and require testing.

Please note that user interface testing is not optional and should always be kept as a part of the testing phase.

As the software’s user interface has developed, so have the user interface testing tools to cope with it. Earlier, most UI testing was done manually, but automation tools have now developed unbelievable strength. Apart from conventional testing through code, UI testing can now be done by visualizing the elements automatically and providing a preliminary screening report for it.

A few tools nowadays have perfected their surveillance game to the next level. Not only can you detect the UI but also sense the changes associated with it. If any user interfaces element changes, it can detect and change the related UI test cases accordingly. Although, it’s up to the testers and their requirements to choose the tools.

The following tools may help you get started in your UI-testing journey:

The next in our list of software testing tools is the bug tracking tool. As the name suggests, it helps in tracking all the bugs and managing their information in a single place.

As the project scales up, the chances of bugs increase as well. This happens due to more functionalities, code, people involvement, etc. Hence, keeping track of all the bugs becomes difficult as one organization may contain different products. Even if you could log bugs in a directory to organize them according to the project, there are a lot of other pieces of information associated with each bug. For instance, a bug may have a few log files related to steps that raise the bug and are attached by testers. Developers look at these at any point while resolving or referring to the bug.

Similarly, each bug may have its own information noted down after the tester files the bug. For instance, when it was assigned to what person and what the assignee replied during this process, etc. All this requires a tracking and management tool called a bug-tracking tool in software testing. With this, you get all the bug-related information and project management features on a single page.

One bug-tracking tool does not work exactly the same way as the other. Since they are tracking tools, other than tracking features, they may present their own set of skills that might or might not be used during a project or by an organization.

All bug tracking tools must have three things intact - the bug information, its current status, and the associated files.

i. The bug information is all the information related to the bug, such as what systems are seeing the issue, what version of the product, additional details, etc.

ii. The status is the current process the bug is going through currently. For instance, is it under test and assigned to tester? Or is it “active” and assigned to the developer?

iii. And the last thing - the associated files are the log files, screenshots or any other such files that might help a developer understand the bug or may be a good reference point when we retrospect it later in the future.

The following tools may help you get started in your bug-tracking journey:

API testing tools focus on the quality and abilities of an API that carries data from server to server or server to client systems.

The APIs or application programming interfaces have become veins of the system. They are responsible for communication between interfaces and a lot of data flow. For instance, all organizations have internal portals to manage support ticket systems for assistance. To save time and increase security, generally, these organizations remove the page where credentials are entered and take the “employee id” from the VPN or system login. Then, as soon as the employee hits the web address of the intranet, s/he is presented with all information even if s/he changes the system and there are no cookies, etc. This is achieved through APIs.

What happens here is as follows:

i. The employee enters the URL.
ii. The network fetches the system id, and the employee logs into it.
iii. An API is hit with this employee id.
iv. The API reaches the server and processes or filters information based on employee ID.
v. The data of the employee is sent back to the client machine.
vi. The data is shown in the UI.

Apart from this, APIs also help in the reusability of the codes. If a navigation bar has five options and you hard code it, you might have to change that in every place on every page when a sixth option is added or one is deleted. It’s better to fetch these options from the server (or any other such dynamic information) with the help of APIs.

So, it is easier to understand now how sensitive APIs are and how great a need it is to protect, inspect and make them reliable for the benefit of our complete system. This is achieved through API testing tools.

An API connects a lot of components. A client sends the API with some information (including authentication data), a server verifies it, a database provides the data, and then this data is reflected in other places. This simple process means if an API is not working, it might be due to any of the components, so careful scrutiny of API becomes important.

i. Make sure all other components associated with the APIs are working correctly before starting with the APIs.

ii. Next, understand the cases where APIs proceed and where it fails. We need to test both of them.

iii. Test for API scalability - how many requests does this API handle simultaneously?

iv. Understand the API responses, and if a “write” action is taken, it reflects in the database.

v. Repeat the same for all the APIs using API testing tools.

Since APIs are not seen on the GUI side, they need tools to test everything mentioned above. A good API testing tool requires minimum input from the tester and provides maximum information to them. This may include response code, response time, formatted response and raw response, etc. Validations should also be handled by the tool. If a request is a GET request and the tester sends it via the “POST” method, the tool should be able to decode this instead of just returning a blank response and leaving the guesswork to the tester. Similarly, the text (or JSON / XML) sent with the body should be able to validate if the request is incomplete, etc.

The following tools may help you get started in your API testing journey:

Organizations adopt security testing tools to ensure that the security of the application is always up to the standards and sensitive information is safe in the databases.

In December 2016, it was reported that Yahoo had been subjected to malicious activities. Yahoo confirmed this in October 2017, announcing that all 3 billion accounts were impacted in this breach. This was a serious case of security issues as sensitive information such as name, email, and even telephone numbers were subject to this breach. It was termed the biggest breach on record and has been a major concern among Yahoo users since then.

Such types of breaches have happened worldwide, with stolen data varying from bank accounts and personal information. And it is not so surprising if the next attack is on your web application. If it has the data, always consider it on the radar. What we can do from our side is to be sure that all the open doors are sealed and that we have a secure web application hosted over the internet. This is verified and inspected by security testing tools.

Security testing tools work in various departments to ensure that when someone is looking to enter the infrastructure illegally, they are stopped at the first check. These tools can monitor the infrastructure regularly and provide tools that can help you point out vulnerabilities and take action on them.

The type of tool you use may have its own specialty and style of working. Since security issues can arise in any project domain, choosing a mix of tools or a perfect tool according to the project is important. A few areas to choose from are a network analysis tool, web application analysis, database analysis, etc.

The following tools may help you get started in your security testing journey:

The above sections conclude that software testing tools are mandatory no matter what product you build. If it is released to the end-users, it better be tested with all these tools.

Apart from the ones discussed above, there may arise a need to use software testing tools specific to a project. For instance, if you are building a web application, cross-browser testing with cross-browser testing tools is essential in such a case. If you are building a mobile application, then a software testing tool specific to mobile testing is important.

However, if we start counting such scenarios, we may end up writing a short novel. Keeping this blog post short and generic in nature, it's better to wrap it up here. I hope this post helps you execute tests efficiently in your next project. Thank you for giving this post your valuable time.