Test Analyst

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

Agile testing is basically a software testing process that uses agile methodologies i.e., follow test-first design
paradigm. It evaluates the software from the customer's point of view. It does not require any development team to
complete coding for starting QA, instead of testing and coding can go hand in hand. Features are tested as they are
developed. Some of its advantages include :

1) Boosts the performance as it allows all the testers and developers to work together
2) Features are tested as they are developed
3) Ensure successful delivery of the high-grade product
4) Saves time and money
5) Flexible and highly adaptable to changes
6) Improves product quality and allows developers to release software as early as possible

1) Manual Testing - A human executes the test cases one by one, without any software assistance.
Automated Testing -Tests are executed by a testing tool or framework, without human assistance.

2) Manual Testing - Useful for non-repeatable tests that involve human ingenuity, participation, and domain experience.
Automated Testing - Useful for repeatable tests where the software feature under test doesn’t change frequently.

3) Manual Testing - Good for accessibility and usability testing, as the tester can test the software from an end-user’s perspective.
Automated Testing - Good for testing regression issues to make sure that the software didn’t break after introducing new changes.

4) Manual Testing - Can be slow and time-consuming, and subject to human errors and misjudgment.
Automated Testing - Since it’s run by a computer, automated tests are fast and free from errors, given that we are testing the right thing.

5) Manual Testing - It’s possible to test the software in a randomized manner, also known as exploratory testing. 
Automated Testing - Exploratory testing is not possible in automated testing.

A test automation framework makes it easy to perform automation testing for your software. Here are some components of a test automation framework.

1) Test Data Management : 
i) A big problem in automation testing is generating the test data. A good test automation framework makes it easy to build test data for the application under test.


2) Testing Libraries : 
i) Managing and running the automated tests is a crucial component of any automated testing strategy. A test automation framework provides libraries that make test management easy.
ii) A good test automation framework provides support for unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests.


3) Testing Tools : 
i) Includes any GUI or command-line tools that make it convenient for testers to run the set of tests repeatedly.
ii) It also consists of tools that enable testing the software under high load to conduct performance testing.

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.

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}

SQL GRANT and REVOKE commands are used to implement privileges in SQL multiple user environments. The administrator of the database can grant or revoke privileges to or from users of database objects by using commands like SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, ALL, etc.

1) GRANT Command : This command is used to provide database access to users other than the administrator.

Syntax:

GRANT privilege_name
ON object_name
TO {user_name|PUBLIC|role_name}
[WITH GRANT OPTION];

In the above syntax, the GRANT option indicates that the user can grant access to another user too.



2) REVOKE command : This command is used to provide database deny or remove access to database objects.

Syntax:

REVOKE privilege_name
ON object_name
FROM {user_name|PUBLIC|role_name};

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.

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 is not a single tool or a framework. It is a suite of tools that work with each other or in isolation to provide different types of automation testing. Here are the four major components of Selenium.

1) Selenium WebDriver :
i) A collection of open-source APIs and browser-controlling code implementations that provide a concise and straightforward programming interface. 

2) Selenium Grid : 
i) It enables the tester to run multiple tests across different browsers, machines, and operating systems in parallel. 

3) Selenium IDE : 
i) Stands for the Integrated Development Environment.
ii) It allows the tester to write, record, run and debug the test cases.

The language used for writing test scripts in Selenium IDE is called Selenese. It is a set of commands used to test your web application or system. Selenium commands could be divided into 3 major categories :

1) Actions: These are the commands interacting directly with web applications.
2) Accessors: These are the commands which allow users to store values to a user-defined variable.
3) Assertions: They enable a comparison of the current state of the application with its expected state.

An annotation is a type of text that has been pre-defined and has a specified meaning. It tells the compiler/interpreter
what to do when the program runs. The annotations on Cucumber are as follows :

1) Given : It specifies the requirements for running the test.
Example : Given I have an account on Interviewbit.

2) When : It establishes the starting point for any test scenario.
Example : When I log in to Interviewbit.

3) Then : It contains the expected result of the test which is to be executed.
Example : Then registration should be successful.

4) And : Between any two statements, it gives the logical AND condition. AND can be combined with the GIVEN,
WHEN, and THEN statements.
Example : When I enter my account number AND CVV.

5) But : It denotes a logical OR relationship between two propositions. OR can be combined with the GIVEN, WHEN,
and THEN statements.
Example : Then I should be logged in BUT I must enter the OTP.

Open-source testing tools, Selenium and Cucumber are both used for functional testing. However, there are some
distinctions between them.

Here are some key distinctions between Selenium and Cucumber :

1) Cucumber is a behavior-driven development automation tool that may be used with Selenium. Selenium is a web
browser automation tool for web projects (or Appium).

2) Cucumber is used for acceptance testing, while Selenium is used for automated UI testing.

3) Technical teams (SDETs/programmers) favour Selenium, while non-technical teams often choose Cucumber
(business stakeholders and testers).

4) Cucumber isn't required for Selenium to work. Cucumber's step-definition implementation is based on Selenium or
Appium.

5) The script creation with Selenium is complicated, whereas Cucumber is straightforward.

Automation testing is useful in the following scenarios :

a) Regression testing: In case of a bug fix or new module implementation, we have to make sure that the already implemented or unchanged functionality is not affected. In this case, we end up running the regression test case multiple times.

For Example: After each change request or bug fix, after each iteration in case of incremental development approach, etc.


b) Non-functional Testing: Testing the non-functional aspects of an application.

For Example, Load testing or performance testing, etc are very difficult for humans to track and analyze.


c) Complex calculation checks or test scenarios that are prone to human errors.


d) Repeated execution of the same tests: Sometimes, we have to run the same set of test case for a different set of data or after each build release or on multiple hardware, software or combination of both.

Automating the test cases in the above scenarios helps in achieving the speed of testing and minimizing human errors.

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.

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.