Software Testing - Recovery Testing
Software testing is an integral part of software development. The recovery testing is performed to ensure that the software can reclaim fast, and efficiently while encountering crashes, issues, and other unexpected circumstances. It validates the overall performance and its capacity to recover after a crash.
The software recovery testing involves simulation of numerous failed use cases to identify probable issues, and confirms that it can handle unforeseen situations properly. Thus it is performed to verify its performance, and overall customer satisfaction.
What is Software Recovery Testing?
The recovery testing is done to validate how well a software can handle crashes, and other unanticipated situations. It includes deliberately causing issues in the software to validate if it can efficiently return to its standard actions. As a result, it confirms whether the software is reliable, and can control unexpected circumstances without compromising on data or other features.
The software recovery testing is also called the disaster recovery testing and it is adopted by a large number of organizations to arrange for backups when the software has failed, or been mangled.
Recovery Tests for Failures Included
The recovery testing is done to ensure that the software is bug free, and can handle failures when they are encountered. It is adopted for critical systems namely defense, medical etc which are driven by strict protocols on the duration to recover from failures, and software behaviors at the time of errors.
Software should be able to recover from failures namely the external device not responding, power supply failure, unexpected server, wireless network signal loss, physical conditions etc.
Steps for Software Recovery Testing
The steps for the software recovery testing are listed below −
Step 1 − The first step involves the recovery analysis. It is very critical to evaluate the softwares capacity to allocate resources namely servers, CPUs etc. This would help to analyze the recovery-related modifications that can affect the software along with each of the potential failures, and their side effects, severity, etc.
Step 2 − The second step involves the preparation of a test plan. The test cases are designed as per the environment, recovery analysis, and other details described in the test plan.
Step 3 − The third step involves the preparation of the test environment as per the recovery analysis.
Step 4 − The fourth step involves the maintenance of backup at various locations for the software related data, conditions, and databases etc.
Step 5 − The fifth step involves allocation of the recovery personnel who have the knowledge, and skills on the software recovery testing.
Step 6 − The sixth step involves documentation of all steps performed at the time of the software recovery testing which can be used to evaluate the robustness of the software in case of errors.
Examples of Software Recovery Failures
The examples of the software recovery testing are listed below −
- When the software is capturing data over the network, we can simulate a failure by switching off the power supply. After some time, we can switch on the power again and validate its capacity to retrieve and resume receiving the data from the point where it stopped.
- When the software is opened in numerous sessions, we can simulate a failure by restarting the system again. After doing so, we can verify if it recovers from the failure, and reload every session which was previously active.
- When a movie is being downloaded over the WIFI, we can simulate a failure by moving to a place which is out of range of that WIFI. This will result in interruption of the downloading process. After some time, we can again move within the range of the WIFI, to check if the downloading process resumed with a good recovery speed.
Types of Software Recovery Failures
The types of the software recovery testing are listed below −
- Database Recovery Testing
- Load and Stress Recovery Testing
- Crash Recovery Testing
- Security Recovery Testing
- Data Recovery Testing
- Environment Recovery Testing
Advantages of Software Recovery Testing
The advantages of the software recovery testing are listed below −
- The recovery testing detects all the potential risks in the software, and mitigates them.
- The recovery testing determines all the probable weaknesses, and vulnerabilities in the software which lead to failures.
- The recovery testing improves the customer experience by reducing the duration of downtime, and data loss during failures.
- The recovery testing ensures the business continuity of the software by resuming operations, and confirming that all the critical actions are working fine post failures.
- The recovery testing verifies the backup, and recovery methods so that they can perform as expected.
- The recovery testing helps to detect defects early in the software development life cycle(SDLC), thereby reducing the cost of downtime, and data loss.
- The recovery testing brings customer trust, faith, and confidence in the softwares capabilities to handle unexpected situations.
Disadvantages of Software Recovery Testing
The disadvantages of the software recovery testing are listed below −
- The recovery testing takes time for completion as it requires execution of numerous steps, simulation of failures, and preparations before, and after performing it.
- The recovery testing has to be performed by individuals who have knowledge, experience, data, backup etc on the same.
- It is difficult to determine the root cause of defects identified during the software recovery testing.
- The recovery testing requires a considerable amount of computations, and resources for its completion.
- The designing of the recovery test cases is a complicated process.
- The software recovery testing depends on the usage of numerous tools, and resources. Hence it is an expensive testing process.
- If the recovery testing is not performed properly, the simulation of failures can lead to corruption, and loss of data which may affect the software integrity.
- If the recovery testing is not thorough, then specific use cases may be missed leading to a false sense of robustness in the software.
- The recovery testing scenarios may not cover all the real life use cases, and scenarios.
Conclusion
This concludes our comprehensive take on the tutorial on Software Recovery Testing. Weve started with describing what is software recovery testing, what are the software non-functional requirements, what are the recovery tests for failures include, what are the steps for the software recovery failures, what are the examples of the software recovery failures, what are the types of the software recovery failures, what are the advantages of software recovery testing, and what are the disadvantages of software recovery testing. This equips you with in-depth knowledge of Software Recovery Testing. It is wise to keep practicing what youve learned and exploring others relevant to Software Testing to deepen your understanding and expand your horizons.