Page 88 - SOFTWARE TESTING & QUALITY ASSURANCE

Unit 6: Compatibility Testing

guidelines. It is possible to pass the compatibility testing by adhering to these standards and
guidelines.
Some of the examples for logo requirements are as follows:

(a) The software should support the mouse device with more than three buttons.
(b) The software should support installation on all the disk drives of a computer.
(c) The software should support longer filenames.
(d) The software must not read, write, or even use the old system files win.ini, system.ini,
autoexec.bat or config.sys

The Microsoft logo must pass compatibility testing through an independent
testing laboratory. This is to ensure that the software runs stable on an
operating system. For more information on logo requirements visit www.
msdn.microsoft.com/certification.

Figure 6.2: Microsoft Windows LOGO

Source: http://windows.radified.com/windows_xp_install.htm

Did you know? Although the requirements sound very simple, they sum up to a huge document
consisting of over 100 pages.

2. Low-Level Standards and Guidelines: Low level requirements are standards that examine
fundamental details such as file formats and network communication protocols. Both these
requirements should be tested to assure compatibility. The low-level standards are considered to
be more important than the high-level standards. It is possible to create a program to run on
Windows, although it may not have the design of the Windows software. Users will not
appreciate the changes but will only emphasize on the use of the product.

Did you know? If the software is a graphic program that saves files to the disk as .pict files (a standard
Macintosh file format for graphics), then the program does not follow the standard for
.pict files. As a result, users will be unable to view the files on any other program.
Therefore, the software will not be compatible with the standard and will be a short
lived product.
Low-level standards should never be taken for granted when it comes to communications protocols and
programming language syntax. Therefore, low-level standards should adhere to published standards
and guidelines. In most cases, the low-level requirement standards are considered as an extension of the
software specification.

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