The Art of Software Testing, Second Edition

9.2. Testing Challenges

You will face many challenges when designing and testing Internet-based applications due to the large number of elements you cannot control and the number of interdependent components. Adequately testing your application requires that you make some assumptions about the environment that your customers use and how they use the site.

An Internet-based application has many failure points that you should consider when designing a testing approach. The following list provides some examples of the challenges associated with testing Internet-based applications:

• Large and varied user base. The users of your Website possess different skill sets, employ a variety of browsers, and use different operating systems or devices. You can also expect your customers to access your Website using a wide range of connection speeds. Not everyone has T1 or broadband Internet access.

• Business environment. If you operate an e-commerce site, then you must consider issues such as calculating taxes, determining shipping costs, completing financial transactions, and tracking customer profiles.

• Locales. Users may reside in other countries, in which case you will have internationalization issues such as language translation, time zone considerations, and currency conversion.

• Testing environments. To properly test your application, you will need to duplicate the production environment. This means you should use Web servers, application servers, and database servers that are identical to the ...