Software Testing Engineer

A test environment consists of a server/computer on which a tester runs their tests. It is different from a development machine and tries to represent the actual hardware on which the software will run; once it’s in production.

Whenever a new build of the software is released, the tester updates the test environment with the latest build and runs the regression tests suite. Once it passes, the tester moves on to testing new functionality.

1) In black-box testing, the tester views the software as a black box, ignoring all the internal structure and behavior.
Their only concern is the input provided to the system and the generated output.

2) Black-box testing verifies the program’s behavior against the specified requirements.

3) During black-box testing, the test conditions are created based upon the software’s functionality but are unaware of how the software works internally.

4) The software is tested from the end user’s perspective and gives a broader picture of the whole system.

5) Given that the users are only concerned with whether the software works according to their needs and don’t care how it works, black-box testing helps test software usability and anticipate how the customer will use the product.

1) Static testing is a technique in which you test the software without actually executing it.

2) It involves doing code walkthroughs, code reviews, peer-reviews, or using sophisticated tools such as eslint, StyleCop to perform static analysis of the source code.

3) Static testing is typically performed during software development.

1) API testing ensures that the APIs that the software is using work as expected.

2) The tester writes code that makes an API request to the server that provides the API, provides the required inputs, collects the output from the response, and matches the actual output with the expected output.

3) API testing primarily concerns the business logic of the software that’s exposing the API. It does not involve the look and feel, accessibility, or usability of the software.

4) API testing can be automated to make it repeatable and reproducible each time they run.

Though automation has its advantages, it’s not a good idea to automate all of your testings. Here are some scenarios when a human tester can do a much better job of testing the software than an automated test suite.

1) The software or the feature under the test changes frequently. It means you have to update your automated tests often to keep them up to date. Tests can quickly become obsolete and stop providing any value.

2) Automated testing is also not suitable for exploratory testing. A human tester can explore the software in a much better way than a computer.

3) Unless the automated tests are programmed or configured to look for UI issues, they can’t find any problems with the UI. It’s much efficient for a human tester to spot any UI inconsistencies or design issues.

Browser automation is the technique of programmatically launching a web application in a browser and automatically executing various actions, just as a regular user would. Browser testing gives you the speed and efficiency that would be impossible for a human tester. Protractor, Cypress, and Selenium are some of the popular tools used in-browser testing.

Some of the activities performed in browser automation are as follows :

1) Navigate to the application URL and make sure it launches
2) Test the various links on the web page and ensure they are not broken.
3) Keep a record of the broken links on the page.
4) Perform load and performance testing on your web application.
5) Launch multiple instances of the browsers with different test users and ensure that concurrent actions work as expected.

Here are some of the best practices a software development and the testing team should use to ensure quality software.

1) Decide what to automate :
i) It’s not possible or practical to automate certain tests, such as usability, accessibility, exploratory testing, or non-repetitive test cases that frequently change.


2) Assign test cases based on skill and experience :
i) When dividing test cases, take into account the skills and experience of the tester and the complexity and severity of the feature under test.


3) Removing Uncertainty :
i) The whole goal of test automation is to have reliable, accurate, consistent tests that provide helpful feedback to the tester. If the tests fail due to bugs in the test itself, or it’s giving false positives, then the ROI on test automation starts decreasing.


4) Choosing the right frameworks and tools :
i) There are a lot of tools to perform automation testing. Picking the wrong tool for the test at hand will waste time and provide false confidence to release software that may fail in production.


5) Keeping test records in a bug database :
i) Using a bug database is a best practice whether a team uses test automation or not.
ii) Whenever new bugs are found by the automation tool or by the testers, they should be recorded in a bug tracking tool with the exact steps to reproduce the bugs and other details.

It’s not possible to automate the testing of CAPTCHA. That is the goal behind any good CAPTCHA strategy. By definition, a computer can’t automate it. If it could, then it’s not a good challenge that you can use in your application.

However, if you need to test an application that uses CAPTCHA, you have to work with the development team to build a workaround or a back door that allows the automated test to bypass the CAPTCHA challenge. It’s important to restrict this workaround only in the test environment and not release it to production.

1) Protractor is an open-source automated testing framework that allows you to perform end-to-end testing of your web applications. It’s built on top of WebDriverJS.

2) Protractor is developed by Google and is especially used for testing Angular applications.

3) Protractor runs the tests against the web application by running it in real web browsers.

4) It also interacts with the application like an end-user would, e.g. clicking buttons, links, filling forms, etc., and verifying the result with the expected outcome.

5) Since Protractor is based on the Selenium WebDriver, it’s easy to perform cross-browser testing. It provides a simple API compared to Selenium, so the learning curve is not too steep.

6) Developers can quickly get familiar with it and start writing the end-to-end UI tests.

7) You can also take snapshots and compare them using Protractor. It also allows you to run parallel test cases on different machines.

STLC (Software Testing Life Cycle) is a fundamental part of SDLC which is used to test software and ensure that the quality standards are met. It generally involves both verification activities and validation activities. In this, different activities are executed in a specific order throughout the software testing process. There are basically six different phases in STLC. They are as follows :

1) Requirement Analysis
2) Test Planning
3) Test Case Development
4) Test Environment Setup
5) Test Execution
6) Test Cycle Closure

In software, many errors occur near the edges of the range of the data values. For example, when the programmer uses the greater-than operator (>) instead of the greater-than-or-equal-to (>=) operator, it causes the off-by-one indexing error.

Typically, developers miss these boundary cases because they follow a happy path when developing and testing. Boundary value analysis helps to discover the errors caused by extreme values. The tester chooses the test data at and immediately above and below the boundaries of the input domain of the data.

For example, if an input field expects a string of 20 characters long, the tester tests it with strings of lengths 19, 20 and 21.

Assuming that the automation tool and framework is already in place of the test environment.

To test the basic “Login” functionality:

1) Understand the project requirement: Login functionality will have a username textbox, a password textbox, and a login button.

2) Identify the Test scenarios: For login functionality, the possible test scenarios are:
2.1) Blank username and password
2.2) Invalid username and password
2.3) A valid username and invalid password
2.4) Valid username and password

3) Prepare a Data input file with the data corresponding to each scenario.

4) Launch the tool from the program.

5) Identify the username field, password field, and the login button.

6) For each test scenario, get the data from the data file and enter into the corresponding fields. Program click on the login button after entering the data.

7) Validate the error message for negative scenarios and the success message for positive scenarios in the test script with the help of assertions.

8) Run the test suite and generate the report.

Types of test cases that can be automated are:

1) Smoke test cases: Smoke testing is also known as build verification testing. Smoke test cases are run every time when a new build is released to check the health of the build for acceptance to perform testing.


2) Regression Test Cases: Regression testing is the testing to ensure that previously developed modules are functioning as expected after a new module is added or a bug is fixed.
Regression test cases are very crucial in incremental software approach where a new functionality is added at each increment phase. In this case, regression testing is performed at each incremental phase.


3) Complex Calculation test cases: Test cases which involve some complex calculations to verify a field for an application fall into this category. Complex calculation results are more prone to human errors hence when automated they give accurate results.


4) Data-driven test cases: Test cases which have the same set of steps and run multiple times with the change of data are known as data-driven test cases. Automated testing for these kinds of test cases is quick and cost-effective.


5) Non-functional test cases: Test cases like load tests and performance tests require a simulated environment with multiple users and multiple hardware or software combinations.
Setting up multiple environments manually is impossible for each combination or number of users. Automated tools can easily create this environment to perform non-functional testing easily.

Selenium comes in four forms-

1) Selenium WebDriver – Selenium WebDriver is used to automate web applications by directly calling the browser’s native methods.

2) The Selenium IDE Plugin – Selenium IDE is an open-source test automation tool that works on record and playback principles.

3) Selenium RC component – Selenium Remote Control(RC) is officially deprecated by Selenium and it used to work using javascript to automate the web applications.

4) Selenium Grid – Allows Selenium tests to run in parallel across multiple machines.

The "type" command is used to enter keyboard key values into a software web application's text box. It can also be used to choose values from a combo box.
You must use a basic "type" command if there is no page reload event when typing.

Whereas the "typeAndWait" command is used when you finish typing and the software web page begins to reload.
This command will wait for the page of the software program to reload before proceeding.

The JUnits annotation linked with Selenium are :

1) @Before public void method() – It will perform the method () before each test, this method can prepare the test

2) @Test public void method() – Annotations @Test identifies that this method is a test method environment

3) @After public void method() - To execute a method before this annotation is used, test method must start with test @Before

Selenium provides the following advantages, which make it an excellent automated testing framework :

1) It is free and open-source software with a large user base and supports providing community.

2) It has cross-browser compatibility and supports multiple browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge, Opera, Safari, etc.

3) It supports multiple operating systems such as Windows, Linux, macOS, etc.

4) It facilitates the usage of multiple programming languages including Scala, Ruby, Python, PHP, Perl, Java, Groovy, C#, etc.

5) It provides support for distributed testing as well.

SQL Aggregate functions determine and calculate values from multiple columns in a table and return a single value.
There are 7 aggregate functions in SQL :

1) AVG(): Returns the average value from specified columns.

2) COUNT(): Returns number of table rows.

3) MAX(): Returns the largest value among the records.

4) MIN(): Returns smallest value among the records.

5) SUM(): Returns the sum of specified column values.

6) FIRST(): Returns the first value.

7) LAST(): Returns last value.

Triggers in SQL is kind of stored procedures used to create a response to a specific action performed on the table such as INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE. You can invoke triggers explicitly on the table in the database.

Action and Event are two main components of SQL triggers. When certain actions are performed, the event occurs in response to that action.

Syntax :

CREATE TRIGGER name {BEFORE|AFTER} (event [OR..]}
ON table_name [FOR [EACH] {ROW|STATEMENT}]
EXECUTE PROCEDURE functionname {arguments}

Tip 1 : The cross questioning can go intense some time, think before you speak.

Tip 2 : Be open minded and answer whatever you are thinking, in these rounds I feel it is important to have opinion.

Tip 3 : Context of questions can be switched, pay attention to the details. It is okay to ask questions in these round, like what are the projects currently the company is investing, which team you are mentoring. How all is the work environment etc.

Tip 4 : Since everybody in the interview panel is from tech background, here too you can expect some technical questions. No coding in most of the cases but some discussions over the design can surely happen.

If you get this question, it's an opportunity to choose the most compelling information to share that is not obvious from your resume.

Example :

Strength -> I believe that my greatest strength is the ability to solve problems quickly and efficiently, which makes me unique from others.

Ability to handle Pressure -> I enjoy working under pressure because I believe it helps me grow and become more efficient.

Tip : Emphasize why you were inspired to apply for the job. You can also explain that you are willing to invest a great deal of energy if hired.

These are generally very open ended questions and are asked to test how quick wit a candidate is. So there is nothing to worry about if you have a good command over your communication skills and you are able to propagate your thoughts well to the interviewer.