{"id":18349,"date":"2013-06-11T10:00:31","date_gmt":"2013-06-11T08:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/?p=18349"},"modified":"2013-06-11T10:00:31","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T08:00:31","slug":"water-testing-is-not-a-term-for-software-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2013\/06\/11\/water-testing-is-not-a-term-for-software-testing\/","title":{"rendered":"Water testing is not a term (for software testing)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve been hearing the term “water testing” for one of the work projects that I am involved in. \u00a0The term is used to describe the stage of the project when it’s available on the production servers with live data, but open only to a subset of the users. \u00a0After searching around for a bit, I can’t find a reference to this term anywhere, except the water industry<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Water testing<\/b>\u00a0is a broad description for various procedures used to analyze\u00a0water quality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So that of course sent me on to the path of finding the correct term. \u00a0The closest by analogy that I heard of is “smoke testing<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

The plumbing industry started using the smoke test in 1875.<\/p>\n

Later this usage seems to have been forgotten, leading some to believe the term originated in the electronics industry: “The phrase\u00a0smoke test<\/i>\u00a0comes from [electronic] hardware testing. You plug in a new board and turn on the power. If you see smoke coming from the board, turn off the power. You don’t have to do any more testing.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Specifically for software development and testing:<\/p>\n

In\u00a0computer programming\u00a0and\u00a0software testing,\u00a0smoke testing<\/i>\u00a0is preliminary testing to reveal simple failures severe enough to reject a prospective software release. In this case, the smoke is metaphorical. A subset of test cases that cover the most important functionality of a component or system are selected and run, to ascertain if the most crucial functions of a program work correctly.\u00a0For example, a smoke test may ask basic questions like “Does the program run?”, “Does it open a window?”, or “Does clicking the main button do anything?” The purpose is to determine whether the application is so badly broken that further testing is unnecessary. As the book “Lessons Learned in Software Testing”\u00a0\u00a0puts it, “smoke tests broadly cover product features in a limited time … if key features don’t work or if key bugs haven’t yet been fixed, your team won’t waste further time installing or testing”.<\/p>\n

Smoke testing performed on a particular build is also known as a\u00a0build verification test<\/i>.<\/p>\n

A daily build and smoke test is among industry best practices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This sounds very much like “sanity testing<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

A\u00a0sanity test<\/b>\u00a0or\u00a0sanity check<\/b>\u00a0is a basic test to quickly evaluate whether a claim or the result of a calculation can possibly be true. It is a simple check to see if the produced material is rational (that the material’s creator was thinking rationally, applying\u00a0sanity). The point of a sanity test is to rule out certain classes of obviously false results, not to catch every possible error. A\u00a0rule-of-thumb\u00a0may be checked to perform the test. The advantage of a sanity test, over performing a complete or rigorous test, is speed.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

In\u00a0computer science, a\u00a0sanity test<\/i>\u00a0is a very brief run-through of the functionality of a\u00a0computer program, system, calculation, or other analysis, to assure that part of the system or methodology works roughly as expected. This is often prior to a more exhaustive round of testing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After reviewing all sorts of testing types<\/a>, I think the correct term for our scenario is actually “beta testing<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

Beta testing comes after alpha testing and can be considered a form of external\u00a0user acceptance testing. Versions of the software, known as\u00a0beta versions, are released to a limited audience outside of the programming team. The software is released to groups of people so that further testing can ensure the product has few faults or\u00a0bugs. Sometimes, beta versions are made available to the open public to increase the\u00a0feedback\u00a0field to a maximal number of future users.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve been hearing the term “water testing” for one of the work projects that I am involved in. \u00a0The term is used to describe the stage of the project when it’s available on the production servers with live data, but open only to a subset of the users. \u00a0After searching around for a bit, I … Continue reading Water testing is not a term (for software testing)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,18,62],"tags":[243,3074,2962,1108,1588,17],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-18349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-programming","category-technology","tag-language","tag-quality-assurance","tag-terminology","tag-testing","tag-version-control","tag-work"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":22107,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2014\/07\/02\/qa-testing-tools-reviews-analysis-and-comparisons-of-quality-assurance-tools\/","url_meta":{"origin":18349,"position":0},"title":"QA Testing Tools – reviews, analysis, and comparisons of quality assurance tools","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"July 2, 2014","format":"link","excerpt":"QA Testing Tools - 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