What software testing types can be considered?

Black box Testing – This type of testing doesn’t require any knowledge of the internal design or coding. These Tests are based on the requirements and functionality.

White box Testing – This kind of testing is based on the knowledge of internal logic of a particular application code. The Testing is done based on the coverage of code statements, paths, conditions.

Unit Testing – the 'micro' scale of testing; this is mostly used to test the particular functions or code modules. This is typically done by the programmer and not by testers; it requires detailed knowledge of the internal program design and code. It cannot be done easily unless the application has a well-designed architecture with tight code; this type may require developing test driver modules or test harnesses.

Sanity Testing or Smoke Testing – This type of testing is done initially to determine if a new software version is performing well enough to accept it for a major testing effort. For example, if the new software is crashing the systems in every 5 minutes or corrupting databases, the software may not be in a 'sound’ condition to proceed for further testing in its current state.

Functional Testing – This a commonly used black-box testing geared to check the functional requirements of an application; this type of testing should be done by testers.

Integration Testing – This testing is combining the ‘parts’ of an application to determine if they function together correctly. The 'parts' can be code modules, individual applications, client and server applications on a network, etc. This type of testing is especially relevant to the client/server and distributed systems.

Incremental Integration Testing – This is continuous testing of an application when a new functionality is added the existing ones; it checks the application functionality by verifying whether it works separately before all parts of the program are completed, in this type it will be checked whether to introduce test drivers or not; this is done by programmers or by testers.

Regression Testing – This is testing the whole application again after the fixes or the modifications are done on the software. This is mostly done at the end of the Software development life cycle. Mostly Automated testing tools are used for these type of testing.

System Testing – This is a type of black-box type testing that is based on overall requirements specifications; covers all combined parts of a system.

End-to-end Testing – This is similar to system testing; this involves testing of a complete application environment such as interacting with a database, using network communications, or interacting with other hardware, applications and so on.

UAT ( User Acceptance Testing ) – This type of testing comes on the final stage and mostly done on the specifications of the end-user or client.

Usability Testing – This testing is done to check the 'user-friendliness' of the application. This depends on the targeted end-user or customer. User interviews, surveys, video recording of user sessions, and other techniques can be used. Programmers and testers are usually not appropriate as usability testers.

Compatibility Testing – Testing how well the software performs in a particular hardware, software, operating system, network etc.

Comparison Testing – This is nothing comparing the software strengths and weakness with another competing product. Mutation testing – This is another method for determining if a set of test data or test cases is useful, by purposely introducing various code changes or bugs and retesting with the original test data or cases to determine whether the 'bugs' are detected.