Testing Basics - what are the difference between sanity and smoke testing.

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what are the difference between sanity and smoke testing.

Total Answers and Comments: 6

Last Update: August 11, 2009 Asked by: mallikarjunarao

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Submitted by: Anirban Guin

Smoke testing is a testing in order to ensure that the product is ready for further major testing.
It ensures that the major functionlaties of the product is working properly and not bothering with the finner details.
On the other hand Sanity testing is a cursory testing i.e a quick testing procedure and is done whenever cursory testing is sufficient to prove that the all functionalities are working according to the specifications, means testing of overall functionalities.

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beniwalg

February 09, 2007 15:00:01

Sam_khan

Member Since: January 2007 Contribution: 13

RE: what are the difference between sanity and smoke t...

Sanity Testing is the brief test of major functional elements of a piece of software to determine if its basically operationalWhere asSmoke Testing is a quick-and-dirty test that the major functions of a piece of software work. It is used for hardware testing practice of turning on a new piece of hardware for the first time and considering it a success if it does not catch on fire

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February 11, 2007 11:21:29

nirmmal

Member Since: December 2005 Contribution: 33

RE: what are the difference between sanity and smoke t...

A smoke test is a series of test cases that are run prior to commencing with full-scale testing of an application. The idea is to test the high-level features of the application to ensure that the essential features work. If they do not work there is no need to continue testing details of the application so the testing team will refuse to do any additional testing until all smoke test cases pass. This puts pressure on the development team to ensure that the testing team does not waste valuable testing time with code that is not ready to be tested.Once smoke tests are implemented as part of your software development life cycle you will see the overall quality of the product improve and the sensitivity to producing high quality software increased.

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February 14, 2007 05:36:38

Anirban Guin

RE: what are the difference between sanity and smoke t...

Smoke testing is a testing in order to ensure that the product is ready for further major testing.
It ensures that the major functionlaties of the product is working properly and not bothering with the finner details.
On the other hand Sanity testing is a cursory testing i.e a quick testing procedure and is done whenever cursory testing is sufficient to prove that the all functionalities are working according to the specifications means testing of overall functionalities.

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Overall Rating: +1

February 16, 2007 03:36:29

ramesh

RE: what are the difference between sanity and smoke t...

After receiving the initial build from develpoment team we conduct sanity test to ensure whether build it stable for further testing or not.while in smoke we randomly pick some major functionality testcases and excute to ensure whether they are working correctly.

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March 30, 2007 15:20:22

umadhu04

Member Since: March 2007 Contribution: 6

RE: what are the difference between sanity and smoke t...

SmokeTesting: Randomly checking major functionality of the application.
SanityTesting:It is smilar to SmokeTesting but we do organized way testing here.

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August 11, 2009 04:54:27

preethi.gollamandala

Member Since: September 2008 Contribution: 88

RE: what are the difference between sanity and smoke testing.

Smoke Test: When a build is received a smoke test is run to ascertain if the build is stable and it can be considered for further testing.

smoke testing can be done for testing the stability of any interim build.
Smoke testing can be executed for platform qualification tests.

Sanity testing: Once a new build is obtained with minor revisions instead of doing a through regression a sanity is performed so as to ascertain the build has indeed rectified the issues and no further issue has been introduced by the fixes. Its generally a subset of regression testing and a group of test cases are executed that are related with the changes made to the app.
Generally when multiple cycles of testing are executed sanity testing may be done during the later cycles after through regression cycles.

Diffrences between Smoke testing and sanity testing:

1)Smoke testing originated in the hardware testing practice of turning on a new piece of hardware for the first time and considering it a success if it does not catch fire and smoke. In software industry smoke testing is a shallow and wide approach whereby all areas of the application without getting into too deep is tested.

A sanity test is a narrow regression test that focuses on one or a few areas of functionality. Sanity testing is usually narrow and deep.

2)A smoke test is scripted--either using a written set of tests or an automated test

A sanity test is usually unscripted.

3)A Smoke test is designed to touch every part of the application in a cursory way. It's is shallow and wide.

A Sanity test is used to determine a small section of the application is still working after a minor change.

4)Smoke testing will be conducted to ensure whether the most crucial functions of a program work but not bothering with finer details. (Such as build verification).

Sanity testing is a cursory testing; it is performed whenever a cursory testing is sufficient to prove the application is functioning according to specifications. This level of testing is a subset of regression testing.

5)Smoke testing is normal health check up to a build of an application before taking it to testing in depth.

sanity testing is to verify whether requirements are met or not checking all features breadth-first.

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