Interfacing testing

What is Interface Testing?

Interface Testing is defined as a software testing type which verifies whether the communication between two different software systems is done correctly.

A connection that integrates two components is called interface. This interface in a computer world could be anything like API’s, web services, etc. Testing of these connecting services or interface is referred to as Interface Testing.

An interface is actually software that consists of sets of commands, messages, and other attributes that enable communication between a device and a user.

How to do Interface Testing

Interface Testing includes testing of two main segments:

1. Web server and application server interface
2. Application server and Database server interface.

For above-mentioned scenarios, the interface testing is done to

• Check servers are executed properly or not
• Errors are handled properly or return an error message for any query made by an application
• Check the outcomes when connection to a web server is reset in between

Why do Interface Testing

Interface Testing is done

• To ensure that end-users or customer should not encounter any problem when using a particular software product
• To identify which application areas are usually accessed by end-users and to check its user-friendliness as well.
• To verify security requirements while communication propagates between the systems
• To check if a solution is capable to handle network failures between an application server and website

Types of Interface Testing

During Interface Testing various types of testing done on the interface which may include

• Workflow: It ensures that the interface engine handles your standard workflows as expected.
• Edge cases -unexpected values: This is considered when testing include date, month and day reversed.
• Performance, load, and network testing: A high-volume interface may require more Load Testing than a low-volume interface, depending on the interface engine and connectivity infrastructure
• Individual systems: This includes testing each system individually. For example, billing system and inventory management system for the retail store should be able to operate separately.

Interface Testing Strategy

Interface Testing Strategy is a method used to test interfaces with common tests regardless of implementation. We can use abstract test cases and create concrete instances of the Test case for each implementation of interface testing strategy. The base/abstract test cases perform implementation-neutral tests while concrete tests take care of instantiating objects to test and perform implementation-specific tests.