Interoperability Testing 

Introduction: 

Interoperability is an ability of a Software to interact with other Software. Mainly to exchange or share the information from one to another. 

Interoperability testing is a form of non-functional testing. It is performed to ensure that the software has the ability of interacting with the other software. By doing this type of testing, tester can ensure that the system is eligible for transferring the required needs by the other system without any compatibility issues. 

For example, to explain the Interoperability testing, consider a person has a Savings Account in MJK bank and the person wants to withdraw money from BHN bank’s ATM machine. This transaction is happened only when the systems are built in with the interoperability functionalities. ATM machine will accept the card and retrieve the money based on the person’s available amount.  

Importance of Interoperability testing? 

By doing this type of testing, we can ensure that: 

• The end-to-end functionality of a software. 
• The software product should be able to communicate with other component or device without any compatibility issues. 
• The performance of the Software. 

Type of Interoperability testing: 

There are five types of Interoperability Testing: 

• Data type Interoperability Testing: 

 
This type of Interoperability testing deals about the data type of the data that shared to the other software/system. If the data shared as a data type Char “xyz” and the response should be received as a the same as defined by the data type Char. 

• Semantic Interoperability Testing: 

 
Semantic Interoperability testing deals on the algorithm used in data transfer. It validates the data semantic that is requested/sent in the data transfer. Algorithm used while data transfer should be reliable. 

• Physical Interoperability Testing: 
   

Physical Interoperability testing validates the connecting devices used to connect the two software systems. Like the ports and data cables used for connection. 

• Protocol Interoperability Testing: 

 
Protocol Interoperability testing focuses on the protocol used in data transfer between two connected software systems. It checks whether the protocol used provides the efficient security to the data or not. The checksum used in protocol enables to transfer the data without any error. 

• Data format Interoperability Testing: 

 
Data format Interoperability testing ensures the format of the requested data and the received data. The format of the data sent, and the data received should be same. If the data sent by the sender is in binary form (0 and 1) then the data received at the receiver end should also be in binary form (i.e. 0 and 1). 

Advantages of Interoperability Testing: 

• It helps the QA/QC to deliver an error less Product to the end customers. 
• It helps to validate the connection between two software systems. 
• It helps in sending and receiving the uniform data type data transfer between two software systems. 

• It retrieves the semantic format in transformation. 
• It ensures the compatibility when it is connected to other system. 
• It improves the performance of the software.  
• It is easier to make decisions when data is provided consistently. 
• It helps to ensures the system/software not having any data type issues while connecting with other. 

Conclusion: 

Interoperability testing is not an easy testing to perform, and it should be done with the proper planning and strategy along with the information, data and experience gained from the past. Interoperability testing guarantees the system’s interoperability quality to interact uninterruptedly and independently with other systems and applications. 

Here is another type of testing, 

Stability Testing 

Introduction: 

Stability testing is also a type of non-functional testing. It is performed to check the efficiency of the product beyond the normal capacity often to a breakpoint. It is performed to measure the efficiency and ability of a software application in a long run. 

It ensures the software’s scalability, robustness, software reliability under heavy load and not at the normal circumstances. It is primarily done to validate stress acceptance on the software component to the maximum.  

For Example, let’s take the Ticket booking app. The below listed items can be performed to ensure the stability of the system. 

• Page loading time when huge number of people accessing the app at the same time. 
• Behavior of the system. 
• Huge number of people tried to book the same bus. 

• Huge number of people selects the same seat in the same bus. 
• How will it allocate the seats when a greater number of requests for the same time. 

Why to do Stability Testing? 

Stability Testing helps the testers to ensure the behavior of the product in real-time.  

• To ensure the effectiveness of the system. 
• To ensure the system stability under the heavy load. 
• To ensure the system can handle large program. 

• To gain confidence about the system under test. 
• It describes the limitations of the system and gives the ideas for development to improve the performance. 

How to do Stability Testing: 

• To determine the scope and objective of the testing, we should ensure that the system never breaks in any of the real-time situations. 
• To determine the business issues, the stability of the system. 
• Verify limit-based testing. 
• How the system recovers after crash. 
• How many requests completed in a same time. 

• How the system behaves under heavy load. 

Stability testing results can be framed based on the below points: 

• Requests per second. 

• Response per second. 
• Transaction per second. 
• CPU utilization while testing. 
• Memory used. 
• Disk Space. 

Stability testing comes under the type of performance testing technique. As same as Stability, we can perform Stress, Scalability, Volume and Spike testing to ensure the reliability of the system. 

With the help of below listed tools we can perform the testing. 

• WebLOAD 

• LoadRunner 
• Apache JMeter 
• NeoLoad 
• CloudTest 
• Loadstorm 
• LoadUI 
• WAPT 
• LoadImpact 
• Loadster 
• Httperf 
• OpenSTA 
• Performance Tester 
• Testing Anywhere 

Conclusion: 

Stability testing is one of the non-functional tests to ensure the behavior of the system by applying maximum load. It is performed to find out the scalability of the system in any environment.