Have you performed software installation testing? How was the experience? Well, Installation testing (Implementation Testing) is very interesting part of testing the software life cycle.
Testing facility is the introduction of a guest in his house. The new host must be properly introduced to all family members to feel comfortable. Installing new software is also quite like the previous example.
If your installation succeeds in the new system, then the client will definitely be happy, but what if things are completely opposite. If the installation fails, then our program will not work in that system not only this, but you can leave the user's system damaged. The user can request to install the whole operating system.
For up to take its toll on users? Definitely not! Your first impression to a loyal customer is ruined due to incomplete installation tests. What to do for a good first impression? Proof of proper installation with a combination of manual and automated processes on different machines with different configurations. Major stakeholders in the testing of the installation is the time! It takes a long time to even run a test case. If you are going to test a large installation application then think about the time needed to perform such test cases in many different configurations.
Let's see the different testing methods for manual installation and basic guide for automating the installation process.
To start testing the initial installation to decide on the number of different system configurations you want to test the installation. Prepare a base hard drive. Format of the most common hard disk or file system by default, install the most common operating system (Windows) on your hard disk. Install some necessary building blocks of this hard drive. Each time you create the images of this base hard drive and you can add the other formations in the base unit. Make a standard format for each operating system configuration and the file to be used for further testing.
How can we use automation in this process? So some systems dedicated to the creation of basic images (using software like Norton Ghost to create accurate images of fast operating system) from the base configuration. This will save enormous time in each test case. For example, if the time to install an operating system with basic configuration is 1 hour after each test case in fresh OS will need 1 + hour. But creating the OS image does not require 5 to 10 minutes and will save approximately 40 to 50 minutes!
You can use an operating system with several installation attempts the installer. Every time you uninstall the application and the basic state of preparation for the next trial. Be careful that your uninstall program must be tested before and should be working well.
NSTALLATION testing tips the cases of some general tests:
1) Use flow charts to test setup. Flow charts simplify our task. View example flow diagram for basic testing facility test case. Installation Testing
Add some more test this basic flow chart, as if our application is the first version and then try to add different logical installation paths.
2) If you have previously installed the compact basic version of application then the following test if you install the full version of the application in the same way as that used for the compact version.
3) If using the flow chart to test different files to be written in the installation disk, while then use the flow chart in reverse to try uninstalling all installed files on the disk.
4) Use flow diagrams to automate testing efforts. It will be very easy to convert diagrams into automated scripts.
5) Test the installer scripts used to control the disk space required. If the installer is pushing to 1 MB of disk space required, then be sure of exactly 1 MB, or if you use more disk space used during installation. If so this flag as an error.
6) requirement of disk space on system file format. Since FAT16 requires more space efficient NTFS or FAT32 file systems.
7) If possible establish a dedicated system to create disk images only. As stated earlier this will save your time of trial.
8) Use distributed testing environment in order to carry out installation tests. Distributed environment, simply save your time and you can effectively manage all the different test cases of a single machine. The best approach to this is to create a master machine, which will lead to different slave machines on the network. You can start installing the machine simultaneously on different host.
9) Try to automate the routine to check the number of files being written to disk. You can keep this list of files to write to the disk and in the Excel sheet and can give this list as a contribution to automatic writing that review each and every path to verify the correct installation.
10) Use the software is freely available on the market for changes in the records of the successful installation. Verify the registry changes to the list of expected change after installation.
11) the strength to break the installation process in the middle. View the system behavior and if the system recovers to its original state without any problem. You can try this "failure of the installation" at each step of the installation.
12) checking disk space: This is crucial in testing the installation-stage testing. You can choose different methods for manual and automated check this. In manual methods you can check the available disk space on the disk before installation and disk space reported installation script to check if the installer is the calculation and reporting of disk space accurately. Check disk space after installation to verify the exact use of disk space for installation. Running Multiple combination of available disk space by using some tools to automatically do the full disk space while installing. Verify system behavior under conditions of low disk space while installing.
13) As you can see the test facility for removal as well. Before each new iteration of the installation, make sure that all files written to disk are deleted after the uninstall. Sometimes the uninstall routine removes only the updated Setup files keeping the latest version of the old files untouched. Also check the option to restart after manually uninstalling and not force a restart.
I have addressed many areas of manual and automated analysis procedure of the installation. There are still many areas to focus on depending on the complexity of their software installation. These important tasks are not addressed include the installation on the network, online installation, patch installation, database control over the installation, installing and uninstalling shared DLLs, etc
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