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8 - Systems Integration Testing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2011

John Watkins
Affiliation:
IBM Software Group, UK
Simon Mills
Affiliation:
Ingenuity System Testing Services Ltd., UK
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Summary

“There has never been an unexpectedly short debugging period in the history of computing”

– Steven Levy, “Hackers”

Overview

The objective of systems integration testing is to provide confidence that the application under test (AUT) is able to successfully interoperate with other specified software systems and does not have an adverse affect on other systems that may also be present in the live environment or vice versa. Systems integration testing is conducted by the testing team under the supervision of the test team leader. Systems integration testing may also be termed compatibility testing or simply integration testing (as termed in the British Library testing process for example – see Chapter 15).

It is possible that the testing tasks performed during systems integration testing may be combined with system testing, particularly if the AUT has little or no requirement to interoperate with other systems.

Systems integration testing should employ black box techniques and will test high-level interoperability requirements of the AUT without considering the internal construction of the AUT (e.g., testing business processes and complete transactions that require intersystem communication or interaction). The use of negative testing and error guessing techniques (see Chapter 3) are particularly appropriate during compatibility testing for uncovering unanticipated problems.

In terms of the V Model, systems integration testing corresponds to the specification phase of the software development lifecycle (see Figure 8.1).

Type
Chapter
Information
Testing IT
An Off-the-Shelf Software Testing Process
, pp. 70 - 76
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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