Software quality Assurance (SQA) involves various processes and techniques that help ensure the quality of software throughout the development lifecycle. These methods are designed to prevent defects, ensure that features meet specified requirements, and maintain high standards of software performance. Here is an in-depth look at some of the key SQA processes and technologies to achieve security testing:
- Code review.
Code review is a key SQA activity where other developers (peers) review source code written by developers before merging it into the main branch. The purpose of this practice is to catch errors early in the development phase, promote higher standards of code quality, and share knowledge across the team. Advantages include:
Detect errors early in the software development process.
Improve the overall design and maintainability of your code.
Improve coding skills throughout the team through peer feedback.
- Automated testing.
Automated testing uses software tools to automatically run tests on software to check for errors, defects, and functional mismatches. This may include:
Unit testing: Testing a single unit or component of a software application.
Integration testing: Tests the combined parts of the application to determine if they work together properly.
System testing: Testing complete and integrated software products to assess whether the system meets its specified requirements.
Automated testing is valuable because it can be performed quickly and repeatedly, which is critical for continuous integration and delivery pipelines.
- Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD).
CI/CD is a way to frequently deliver applications to customers by introducing automation in the application development phase. The key concepts of CI/CD are continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment. CI/CD aims to:
Reduce risk in software development.
Ensure that the software can be reliably released at any time.
Helps developers quickly detect and locate errors.
- Static and dynamic analysis.
Static analysis: This technique involves analyzing code without executing it. It is used to detect coding errors, security vulnerabilities, and compliance with coding guidelines.
Dynamic analysis: Unlike static analysis, dynamic analysis involves executing code. It provides insight into the behavior of the system and verifies that the system performs the expected tasks under different conditions.
- Risk-based testing.
Risk-based testing Prioritizes the testing of features and functions in software applications based on the risk of failure, the importance and likelihood of failure, and the impact of failure. This approach helps optimize testing for the most critical areas of the system.
- Test Driven Development (TDD).
TDD is a software development method in which tests are written before the code that needs to be tested. The process follows a simple cycle:
Write a test for a new function.
Run the test and see it fail.
Implement this function.
Run the test again and see if it was successful.
Refactor the code for optimization.
This technology ensures that the software is tested at the functional level and that the tests cover all functions, thus improving code quality.
- Performance test.
Such tests are performed to determine how responsive and stable the system is under a specific workload. It can involve load testing, stress testing, spike testing, etc., to ensure that the software application performs as expected under different conditions.
