What is Functional Testing? Types and Tools

In this blog post, before proceeding to discuss about functional testing in detail, we should know about the concept of testing first, what is the actual meaning of testing and more importantly what is the primary and ultimate goal or purpose to perform testing for any software or application?  

Testing in simple words, is basically the process which is done or performed to compare the actual results with the expected results. The need to perform testing is to identify whether all functions of the software or application are working as per the requirements and expectations or not with the aim or focus to ensure that the software or application which is under test has or hasn’t any defects or bugs.  

So, basically the primary and ultimate goal or purpose of performing testing is to make software or application defects or bug free. 

Concept of Functional Testing 

• As the name suggests, Functional Testing is the type of Software Testing which is done or performed to verify and validate the functionality of the software or application that is under test, behaving as per the expectations and requirements or not.  

• In Functional Testing, each and every functionality of the software or application is tested by giving the values, determining the output, and verifying as well as validating the actual output with the expected output to verify and validate the functionality of the software or application. 

• Functional Testing is a type of black-box testing which is done manually or through use of any automation software tool, because it focuses only on application specifications rather than the actual code, which means the tester has to test only the program rather than the system. 

What is the process of Functional Testing?

Each and every test engineer should have to follow this process to perform functional testing for any software application: –

• Thorough analysis about requirement specifications of software or application on which the tester wants to perform functional or functionality testing. 

• After the process of analyzing requirement specifications is done, the tester should have to create a test plan to perform functional or functionality testing. 

• After the process of creation of test plans is done, the tester should have to design test cases to perform functional or functionality testing. 

• Finally, the tester should have to execute the test cases to compare the actual results with the expected results after completing the steps as mentioned above to perform functional or functionality testing so as to find any defects or bugs in the functionality of software or application which is under testing.  

• The defects or bugs found in the software or application upon the conclusion of functional or functionality testing are known as functional or functionality bugs. 

What are the main types of Functional Testing?

Following is some of the types of functional testing methods that are used to test the functionality of any software application: –

1. Unit Testing – Unit Testing is a type of functional or functionality testing in which the individual unit or component of the software or application is tested to examine the different parts of the software or application. The main purpose to perform this type of functional or functionality testing is to ensure each component is working properly or not. Generally, this type of functional or functionality testing is done from the developer side during the development phase of the software or application. 

2. Smoke Testing – Smoke Testing is yet another type of functional or functionality testing that determines whether the deployed software or application build is stable or not which means the verifying and validating the important features of the software or application are working properly and correctly or not. It is also known as “Build Verification Testing” or “Confidence Testing”. 

3. Sanity Testing – It is yet another type of functional or functionality testing which is performed after receiving a software or application build, with minor changes in the code or functionality, to ensure whether the defects or bugs which are introduced due to these minor changes in the code or functionality of the software or application have been fixed or not. 

4. Regression Testing – It is yet another type of functional or functionality testing which is done or performed whenever there are new changes or features introduced in the code or functionality of the software or application to ensure that these new code changes don’t have adverse effects on the pre-existing functionalities or features of the software or application. Regression Testing can also be done or performed whenever any defects or issues in the software or application is fixed. 

5. Integration Testing – It is yet another type of functional or functionality testing where software or application modules are integrated logically and tested as a group. The goal or purpose to perform this type of testing is to expose defects or bugs in the interaction between these software modules when they are integrated. Integration Testing main focus is to check data communication among these modules. Hence, it is also known as ‘I &T Testing’, ‘String Testing’ & sometimes also known as ‘Thread Testing’. 

6. User Acceptance Testing – It is yet another type of functional or functionality testing which is done or performed from the client side to certify the software or application working as per the requirements and expectations or not. User Acceptance Testing is the final phase of testing before releasing the software or application to the market or production environment. 

Top Functional Testing Tools

Following is some of the popular tools used by test engineers to perform functional testing for any software application: –

1. Selenium – One of the most popular open-source automation software tools used to perform functional or functionality testing for all web-based, mobile-based and desktop-based applications. 

2. SoapUI – Another popular & open-source testing tool used to perform functional or functionality testing tool, mainly used for all web-based application testing with the support of multiple protocols such as HTTP, SOAP, and JDBC. 

3. Junit – Yet another popular & open-source testing tool used to perform functional or functionality testing, mainly used for all Java programming language-based applications and it can also be used to perform unit and system testing as well at the same time. 

4. Cucumber – Yet another popular & open-source testing tool used to perform functional or functionality testing although written in Ruby programming language but it supports other programming languages as well like Java, C-Sharp or C# and Python. 

What are the benefits of functional testing?

Following is some of the advantages in performing functional testing for any software application: –

• It ensures a defect or bug free software product or application. 

• It ensures that end-user of the software product or application is satisfied. 

• It ensures that all needs and requirements of the software product or application are met. 

• It ensures the proper working for all the functionalities of the software product or application. 

• It ensures that software product or application will work as expected. 

• It ensures safety and security of the software product or application. 

• It improves the quality of the software product or application. 

What are the disadvantages of Functional Testing?

Following is some of the disadvantages in performing functional testing for any software application: –

• It can miss a critical and logical error in the software product or application. 
• This type of software testing doesn’t guarantee the software product or application to go live. 
• The possibility of conducting redundant testing is high in functional testing. 

Conclusion

In the end, we can conclude to say, that for building a strong foundation of a top-class software product or application, functional testing is essential and necessary, as it is a very critical and important part of every test routine. 

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