Guidance on system integration

Hello,

I am looking for information and guidance on system integration.
Here are the details:

I am working as a analyst on complex application which is not code complete. Integration of component is still happening. we have testing team which will be doing integration testing (blackbox) based on workflows and requirements. Programmers are doing unit testing. I am asked to do development side integration testing (I dont know what this means).

It is not unit testing. but testing to check point to point interaction..checking API calls, intefaces for integrated component. How data flows from one module to another module. I am not given any information on which tool can be used for this.

Also I am told that this testing is not against requirements. I am the only person assigned on this. We have really big testing team. so I am concern that without even understanding what I need to do I will work on testing (application so big that we have 15 testers or more for entire application) can you help me with this?

I am really confused here. How it is different from what V&V is going to do? I apprecieate your response on this matter.

Thanks,
Raj

Integration testing is basically to test if the output of one module is correctly taken as the input by the other module.

In large projects, there r major modules that work independently from each other but the output of one module is taken as the input by the next module in the logical sequence. :D

To test the integration part between such large modules, one need to understand the kind and format of the output from the previous module and the way the next module in the sequence evaluates this output. So, the concentration should be more on output and input architecture rather than the actual processing in each module. :eek:

Yes, it is obviously going to be as per the requirements and the output and input architecture should have been defined clearly in the requirements docs.

Checking API calls - this is all about testing the integration code snippets. These are separate procedures that are basically transferring data from one module to the other.

Interface for integrated components - In some cases, there may be User Interface that helps the user extract that data from one module and feed it as the input for another module. This UI also needs to be tested as part of Integration testing.

Integration testing is best done manually.

U being alone to handle Integration Testing among 15+ members is not a +ve factor.

Anyways, I C there is a BIG challenge for U ahead. Gud luck… :)