System Testing:
System testing of software or hardware is testing conducted on a complete, integrated system to evaluate the system’s compliance with its specified requirements. System testing falls within the scope of black box testing, and as such, should require no knowledge of the inner design of the code or logic.
As a rule, system testing takes, as its input, all of the “integrated” software components that have successfully passed integration testing and also the software system itself integrated with any applicable hardware system(s). The purpose of integration testing is to detect any inconsistencies between the software units that are integrated together (called assemblages) or between any of the assemblages and the hardware. System testing is a more limiting type of testing; it seeks to detect defects both within the “inter-assemblages” and also within the system as a whole.
Testing the whole system:
System testing is performed on the entire system in the context of a Functional Requirement Specification(s) (FRS) and / or a System Requirement Specification (SRS). System testing is an investigatory testing phase, where the focus is to have almost a destructive attitude[citation needed] and test not only the design, but also the behavior and even the believed expectations of the customer. It is also intended to test up to and some suggest beyond the bounds defined in the software / hardware requirements specification(s) – although how this is meaningfully possible is undefined.
Types of system testing:
The following examples are different types of System testing:
1) GUI software testing
2) Usability testing
3) Performance testing
4) Compatibility testing
5) Load testing
6) Volume testing
7) Stress testing
8) Security testing
9) Scalability testing
10) Sanity testing
11) Smoke testing
12) Exploratory testing
13) Ad hoc testing
14) Regression testing
15) Reliability testing
16) Recovery testing
17) Installation testing
18) Maintenance testing
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