Page 70 - SOFTWARE TESTING & QUALITY ASSURANCE

Unit 5: Special Types of Testing

Graphic cards with large memory are used to obtain high resolution and more
colors.

6. Device Drivers: Device drivers are the drivers that help in establishing communication between
hardware components and software applications. The device drivers are provided by the
hardware manufacturers and are installed in the computer.

Did you know? Device drivers are the software used for testing purposes and are a part of the
hardware configuration.
Isolating Configuration Bugs
Isolating the configuration bugs is essential while performing configuration testing. A software tester
must be aware of the common bugs that can arise in the process of testing. Configuration bugs are
found by performing similar kind of operations on different computers with different hardware setups.
Discovery of configuration bugs can cost you a lot and hence you must make efforts to detect them
during the early stages of testing.

Did you know? While playing a game, if you happen to encounter inconsistency in colors or if pixels
get stuck, then you have discovered a display adapter configuration bug.

Sizing up the Job
The job of a configuration tester is very challenging. The number of software testers required for testing
each of the tasks is first addressed. Consider testing a gaming software application on Microsoft
Windows operating system. In this scenario, it is necessary to check for appropriate sound effects. So,
configuration testing is carried out with the various sound cards and graphics cards, along with the
modem specifications.

Did you know? Suppose there are 330 display cards, 240 sound cards, 1,500 modems, and 1,200
printers. The number of test combinations would be 330x240x1, 500x1, 200, which is a
very huge number. As a software tester, by using equivalence partitioning you can test
the above combination in an effective way.
5.1.2 Identifying Software Configuration

Configuration testing ensures that the software works perfectly fine with the various hardware
configurations. Only the most important features that are different from one another are tested using
equivalence partitioning. Let us now consider the following example for equivalence partitioning.

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