Integration Testing Strategies Used By the Best QA Companies

In order to find as many bugs as possible within a comparatively short period of time, top 10 software testing companies develop effective integration testing strategies.

Basis of Integration Testing:

• System design.
• Architecture.
• Business-processes.
• Use cases.

Common Test Objects:

• Database subsystems.
• Infrastructure.
• Interfaces.

System Configuration:

• Configuration data.

Integration testing is meant to check interfaces between components, interaction between various parts of a system amongst which are: operating systems, hardware, file systems and interfaces between the systems. Choosing to use quality assurance and testing services you will be able to solve the problem with integration testing in the most effective way!

Integration testing can be done at one or more levels and with test objects of different size in the following way:

1. Component integration testing aims to verify the interaction between program components and is conducted only after component testing.
2. System integration testing intends to investigate the interaction between systems or hardware and can be performed after system testing. In this case, the developers are able to manage only one side of the interface. However, this kind of work may involve risk. Business process activities may include a sequence of systems; and, therefore, one should consider cross-platform differences.

The greater the amount of integration the more difficult it becomes to isolate defects of a separate component or a system from other defects and this may bring additional risks and time-consuming problems.

System integration testing strategies can be based on system architecture, top-down or bottom-up one, functional tasks, transaction handling or other aspects of a system or its components. In order to simplify the process of isolating defects and detecting them as early as possible, the integration must start from the innermost or lowest unit of application and move towards the upper ones.

Testing of certain non-functional characteristics (such as performance) can be a part of integration testing, along with functional testing. At each integration test phase, testers focus on the integration as such. These specialists can also provide continuous integration services for software development. This practice allows to discover defects early and locate them much easier.