Difference between Software Testing and Embedded Testing


Software testing involves only the testing of software parts of the system, while embedded testing involves the testing of both software and hardware parts of the system. Read through this article to find out more about software testing and embedded testing and how they are different from each other.

What is Software Testing?

Software testing refers to verifying and validating the behavior of the software developed. It ensures that software works as expected without any defect. It also helps in documenting that software is meeting the requirements and is ready to use. Software testing also checks the exceptions and error handling process.

Software testing involves evaluating the performance of software components to identify the bugs, errors, or defects in the software. In software development, software testing is one of the important activities that is performed before deploying the software to the end-user. It also enables the developers to share relevant information about the quality of the software to the user. Software testing involves the examination of software code in different environments.

What is Embedded Testing?

Embedded testing refers to verifying and validating the behavior of both software and hardware using that software. It ensure that embedded system as a whole works perfectly without any bug/defect. Embedded testing is performed on hardware. It too helps in documenting the system development meets customer requirements.

Embedded testing ensures that the entire system is bug or defect free along with its hardware and software. Therefore, the embedded testing of a system guarantees that the system meets the client’s requirements or specifications. A typical example of embedded testing is the testing performed on microcontrollers.

Difference between Software Testing and Embedded Testing

The following table highlights the important differences between Software Testing and Embedded Testing −

Key Software Testing Embedded Testing
Target Software Testing is performed on software. Embedded testing is performed on both software and hardware.
Target Software testing is performed on client-server oriented applications. Embedded testing is performed on hardware.
Testing Type Software testing is generally black box based. Embedded testing can be while as well as black box based.
Applications Web and Mobile applications are tested using software testing. Embedded systems are tested using embedded testing.
Testing Software testing is to test software functionality. Embedded testing tests hardware behavior.
Manual Software testing can be manual or automatic. Embedded testing is mostly manual.
Cost Software testing normally takes time and is costly Embedded testing takes less time and is not very costly.
Testing of database In software testing, the database can be tested. In embedded testing, the database cannot be tested.
Example Testing android applications and computer software are the examples of software testing. Testing of microcontrollers is an example of embedded testing.

Conclusion

From the above comparison of software testing and embedded testing, we may conclude that software testing verifies and validates the performance of the software as per the client’s requirements, and it only identifies the bugs or defects in the software components. On the other hand, embedded testing checks all attributes of both hardware and software components of a system and helps us to ensure that the specified embedded system meets the client’s requirements.

Updated on: 02-Dec-2022

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