Software applications have become common in every business sector. However, before these apps are released to the market, these web and mobile apps should be end-to-end tested by adopting various software testing methods. The most common testing practices are system testing, integration testing, unit testing, acceptance testing, and performance testing, to name a few.

Content 1. What is Integration Testing? 2. Why Should Integration Testing be taken up? 3. What are the benefits businesses get with Integration Testing? 4. What are the Important Integration Testing mobile apps,Approaches Businesses Should Know? 5. Steps to Perform Integration Testing 6. What are the important Integration testing tools? 7. Conclusion

Each of these testing practices is interlinked with one another to identify the errors, validate the behaviour, performance, and reliability of the software. After the initial unit testing practice, integration testing is taken up which involves testing system components and units of code effectively. Significantly, the integration testing process becomes an essential need for businesses before actually planning to move for system testing and other methods of software testing.

What is Integration Testing?

Integration testing is one of the agile methodologies of software testing where individual components or units of code are tested to validate interactions among different software system modules. In this process, these system components are either tested as a single group or organized iteratively.

Typically, system integration testing is taken up to validate the performance of the entire software system as a whole. The main purpose of this testing method is to expand the process and validate the integration of the modules with other groups. It is performed to verify if all the units operate in accordance with their specifications defined.

Why Should Integration Testing be taken up?

In Software testing, it is important that every system component gets integrated with the different application modules. Though each of the software modules is unit tested, there are critical chances for the modules to have defects, and this calls for the need for Integration testing to come into place.

Significantly, system integration testing is taken up to effectively verify the various interactions between modules and also verifies the low-level and high-level software requirements as given in the software requirements specifications document.

The need for Integration testing can be understood from the points listed below:

• When modules are developed they have to be integrated and tested. Integratio testing approachesn testing is a simple extension of unit testing.

• If integration testing is taken up at early stages, bugs are identified early in the software development life cycle and it’s true in both bottom-up and also in the top-down approach.

• Integration tests identify and solve system-level issues such as a broken database schema, mistaken cache integration, etc.

• Integration testing is capable of developing real-time use cases during end-to-end testing.

• In integration testing, tests run swiftly when compared to end-to-end tests.

Some of the main situations when Integration testing should be taken up:

• When any new changes are made to the application requirements, then this may require integration testing as the new changes may not be unit tested.

• Integration testing becomes necessary to understand the logic implemented by the developer against the requirements.

• When modules interact with APIs and third-party tools, then to validate these interactions and know the response, integration testing becomes essential.

What are the benefits businesses get with Integration Testing?

With integration testing, most of the test cases are written at the early stage and thus helps to perform execution on every build. This testing process tackles the bugs related to exception handling and validates the performance, functionality, and reliability of the integrated modules.

Some of the other benefits include:

• Simplifies the integration among different application modules

• Enhances the code coverage and improves the reliability of the tests

• Identifies system-level issues such as integration mistakes, broken databases and helps to resolve them at the earliest

• Assures in interacting with other third-party tools and APIs

• Bugs are identified and resolved at the early stage

• Improves the overall development and production time

What are the important Integration Testing approaches businesses should know?

It is classified into different testing approaches, some of them are:

Big Bang Integration Testing:

In this approach, almost all of the units or major units are combined together to perform integration testing in one attempt. Usually, this method is practised when teams have entire software in their bundle.

Incremental Testing:

In this testing approach, a minimum of two modules that are logically related is tested. Then, the related modules are summed up to perform testing and achieve proper functioning. This process is continued until the modules are addressed and tested.

Top-down Integration Testing:

In this testing approach, the teams test the top-level units first and then perform step-by-step testing of lower-level units.

Bottom-up Integration Testing:

In this testing approach, the testing starts from the lower units of the application and then gradually moves up, i.e. the testing is practised from the bottom of the control parts.

Hybrid/Sandwich Integration Testing:

This approach is also known as hybrid integration as it is a combination based on bottom-up and top-down approaches. This approach overcomes many other limitations and helps to achieve the benefits of both the approaches with its three layers:

– The main target layer,

– The layer below the target layer, and

– The layer above the target layer.

After having known about Integration testing in detail, businesses should also know the most important aspect of Steps to Perform Integration Testing.

Steps to Perform Integration Testing

1. Prepare an effective integration test plan and identify unit interfaces:

Before planning to perform integration testing, it is necessary for the teams to prepare a test plan strategy. This helps them to perform testing that is in flow. Simultaneously, the developers have to identify and document test cases and test data.

2. Identify critical modules to test on priority:

In this step, it is essential to study the application’s architecture design. This will help to identify the critical modules that need integration testing on a priority basis and also have an understanding of other modules.

3. Examine the interfaces:

While designing the test cases and test scenarios, it is essential to gather information related to integration test templates. Interfaces have to be reconciled, i.e. when one-unit X transfer’s data to another unit Y, then there should be a clear indication that the data has been transferred from unit X. If there is no indication among these interfaces, then these need to be examined and fixed before moving further for integration testing.

4. Demonstrate the Integration test conditions:

In order to process the integration testing for each program unit, test conditions should be prepared. Once the conditions are listed, these have to be documented, so that they can be used while performing integration tests.

5. Choose an automation tool and execute the tests:

When the test scripts and test conditions are prepared, choose an automation testing tool for integration testing. Execute the test cases and if there are any defects identified, report the defects for re-testing.

6. Re-test to Validate for Completeness of Integration tests:

For the test cases that reported defects, perform re-testing. This step has to be carried until the integration testing is completed and all the conditions are fulfilled.

What are the important Integration testing tools?

Protractor:

This is an open-source automation framework known as an E2E testing framework. Protractor is preferred for applications that are based on Angular and AngularJS.

The tool’s WebDriverJS uses specific drivers and native browser to validate the application interaction.

Characteristics of Protractor:

• This tool is specifically used for integration testing

• This tool helps to run instances of the applications

• Helps to write end-to-end test suites

• Runs tests from the user point of view

Rational Integration Tester:

This tool helps to provide a scripting free environment and helps to avoid the bugs related to integration testing within the iterative agile development process. It provides many features such as the creation of code-free and reusable stubs and also reduces the risks of any failure.

Characteristics of Rational Integration Tester:

• Helps to reduce test cycle time as integration testing is performed at the early stage

• This tool helps in reducing the development time as integration testing is performed earlier than functional and regression testing

TESSY:

This software testing tool helps to perform integration and unit testing for embedded software. With its Classification Tree Editor (CTE), teams can easily specify the test cases. Also, this tool helps in identifying the application’s code coverage.

Characteristics of TESSY:

• Helps in generating test reports for the results of test execution

• Supports C and C++ programming languages

• Supports in providing code coverage even without an additional effort

• This tool has Workspace, Test Data Editor (TDE) and Test Interface Editor (TIE) as three major functions

• Helps in analyzing the interface and determines the variable that is used in the function

LDRA:

This tool by Liverpool Data Research Associates (LDRA) is a tool suite that helps in automating the code analysis for performing integration testing and also helps in verifying the compliance standards, etc. The popular integration tools from LDRA are TBrun and LDRAunit.

Characteristics of LDRA:

• An open-source platform

• LDRA tools suite helps to build integration tests and provides dynamic analysis across platforms

• TBrun tool helps to perform automated unit testing and integration testing

• LDRAUnit is a standalone tool and assures to provide a fully integrated environment for performing unit testing.

Conclusion

Enterprises are effectively validating that before the applications are set to release, they are tested with proper software testing practices. Integration testing is one of the key software testing practices in the software development life cycle. In this methodology, software modules are integrated and tested to build a complete system and assures to develop software that is assured of functionality, reliability, and performance.

Enterprises following agile and DevOps should embrace integration testing practices so that various modules of the software work effectively when they are grouped together. Leveraging a next-gen testing service provider for integration testing helps to enhance the testing methods by best practices, and assuring faster development and faster time to market, along with quicker ROI. Talk to our experts today!

The post Integration Testing: What is, Types, Tools, Steps to Perform first appeared on TestingXperts.

Contents 1. Integration Testing Overview 2. Why Integration Testing is Essential within the SDLC? 3. How to initiate Integration Testing? 4. Critical aspects to watch out before initiating Integration Testing 5. Steps to Perform Integration Testing 6. What are the advantages of Integration Testing? 7. What are the different methods of Integration Testing? 8. What are the best practices to follow for Integration Testing? 9. What are the tools for performing integration testing? 10. Conclusion

Integration Testing Overview

Integration testing primarily focuses on verifying data communication among different modules of the software project. Integration tests determine the effectiveness and performance of different software modules when they are connected to each other. It rather determines whether a system of multiple modules work together as per the requirements specified. Individual units are culminated together and tested as one unit to validate the performance, functionalities, and reliability of the software. The formal software testing process involves testing different modules initially with unit testing and then moved further for integration testing.

Why Integration Testing is Essential within the SDLC?

The software has changing requirements and new patches of code are developed frequently. When these patches are grouped together to form one software, this testing process should be taken up. Usually, when complex software is built, it is classified into different modules and separately coded. It is essential that all these modules require integration test to know how they perform when combined. Usually, integration testing is done after unit testing to ensure all the units work in harmony with each other. It is also done when support libraries are used along with the code.

Steps to Perform Integration Testing

How to initiate Integration Testing?

– Get a complete understanding of the application under test

– Identify the work-flow of different modules

– Get an overview of what each Module does

– Take a stance of the way data is transferred from one module to another

– Get the view of exact data entry and data exit of the application

– Segregate the application to match the testing pattern

– Identify and create test conditions based on data flow

– Draft the test cases with deep analysis of conditions

– Start integration testing of modules

Critical aspects to watch out before initiating Integration Testing

1. Ensure that a detailed design document with listing of various interactions between modules is listed

2. A proper configuration management system should be kept in place to track the right version of each unit

3. Ensure that initially unit testing is taken up before Integrated testing is started

4. As regression testing is essential each time a unit is integrated, automate tests based on a top-down or bottom-up approach to ensure effective results

What are the advantages of Integration Testing?

– It provides a systematic technique for assembling a software system while conducting tests to uncover defects associated with interfacing

– Ensures the integrated modules and components work properly

– As software development involves changes in requirements, testing of modules at different levels is vital for which this testing proves to be effective

What are the different methods of Integration Testing?

It ensures effective functioning across modules when combined. A more in-depth look at its different types is as below:

Big Bang Approach:

It is one type of Integration testing wherein all modules are tested in one go. It verifies whether the system works as expected. The only disadvantage with this type of testing is, if there is an issue detected within the modules, it becomes challenging to find out which module has caused it. It is supposed to be the right agile approach for testing small systems while it is a more time-consuming process.

Incremental Approach:

This type of progressive approach is used to test two or more modules that are logically aligned and tested in a single batch. Additional and related modules are tested to make sure that all modules are merged and tested with each other effectively. This Incremental approach can either be a Bottom-up or Top-down approach.

Top-Down Integration Testing:

This process involves the testing of high level or the parent modules at first level, and then testing of the lower level or child modules, and then integrated together. Stubs, which are a small segment of the code are used to simulate the data response of lower modules until they are completely tested and integrated.

Bottom-Up Integration Testing:

It is the reverse of top-down approach wherein first lower-level modules are tested before they are actually integrated with their parent modules. Drivers which simulate the data response of a connecting higher level or parent module is used instead of the stub.

Hybrid/Sandwich Integration:

This is a hybrid method that combines both bottom-up and top-down methods into single sandwich method. It allows testing top modules with lower modules and vice versa at the same time. This type of testing ensures better and faster results.

Regression Testing:

For any iterative development or upon any issue resolution, testing needs to be taken up to ensure the change did not inadvertently break or change expected results elsewhere in the application. Hence, it should be taken up to ensure other areas of the application are functioning as per the design objectives. It should be done with every release, and as it is very repetitive, hence test automation can simplify this process.

System Integration Testing:

It involves the testing of a collection of modules and interfaces to check if the application meets the specification requirements. It is both Black box and white box testing hence the knowledge of modules and interfaces is required. The process involves functional testing wherein testing is performed to check whether the modules when combined ensure the correct outcome and are performed by developers and test engineers. Moreover, in system testing, test cases are developed to simulate the interaction between modules. It also involves the testing of systems and packages especially testing interfaces to external entities.

What are the best practices to follow for Integration Testing?

– Perform Integration Testing only after Unit Testing

– Any core business logic should not be tested with Integration testing

– Testing suites should be maintained separately such that developers can run unit tests during development and before committing code

– Integration tests might span several modules and log extensively, and if these tests fail, it becomes challenging to identify the cause

– It is important not to stop at integration test and go beyond it as it is essential to run system tests that accurately simulate the production environment

What are the tools for performing integration testing?

1. Protractor:

2. Citrus Integration Testing:

3. Tessy:

4. Jasmine:

5. Steam:

Conclusion

Integration testing should be taken up to ensure that different modules work effectively when integrated. Enterprises following agile and DevOps should take up integration testing to ensure modules function effectively when grouped.

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