Nonfunctional

Non Functional Software Testing

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Special methods exist to test non-functional aspects of software.

• Performance testing checks to see if the software can handle large quantities of data or users. This is generally referred to as software scalability. This activity of Non Functional Software Testing is often times referred to as Load Testing.
• Usability testing is needed to check if the user interface is easy to use and understand.
• Security testing is essential for software which processes confidential data and to prevent system intrusion by hackers.
• Internationalization and localization is needed to test these aspects of software, for which a pseudolocalization method can be used.

In contrast to functional testing, which establishes the correct operation of the software (correct in that it matches the expected behavior defined in the design requirements), non-functional testing verifies that the software functions properly even when it receives invalid or unexpected inputs. Software fault injection, in the form of fuzzing, is an example of non-functional testing. Non-functional testing, especially for software, is designed to establish whether the device under test can tolerate invalid or unexpected inputs, thereby establishing the robustness of input validation routines as well as error-handling routines. Various commercial non-functional testing tools are linked from the Software fault injection page; there are also numerous open-source and free software tools available that perform non-functional testing.