SMOKE TESTING & SANITY TESTING

Smoke testing is done by testers before accepting a build for further testing. It is believed that after the code reviews, smoke testing is the most cost effective method for identifying and fixing defects in software.


A smoke test is a collection of written tests that are performed on a system prior to being accepted for further testing. This is also known as a Build Verification Tests.


This is a "shallow and wide" approach to the application. The tester "touches" all areas of the application without getting too deep, looking for answers to basic questions like, "Can I launch the test item at all?", "Does it open to a window?", "Do the buttons on the window do things?"


Software Sanity Tests are commonly conflated with smoke tests. A smoke test determines whether it is possible to continue testing, as opposed to whether it is reasonable. A software smoke test determines whether the program launches and whether its interfaces are accessible and responsive (for example, the responsiveness of a web page or an input button). If the smoke test fails, it is impossible to conduct a sanity test. In contrast, the ideal sanity test exercises the smallest subset of application functions needed to determine whether the application logic is generally functional and correct (for example, an interest rate calculation for a financial application). If the sanity test fails, it is not reasonable to attempt more rigorous testing. Both sanity tests and smoke tests are ways to avoid wasting time and effort by quickly determining whether an application is too flawed to merit any rigorous testing. Many companies run sanity tests and unit tests on an automated builds as part of their development process


a SANITY test is a very brief run-through of the functionality of a computer program, system, calculation, or other analysis, to assure that the system or methodology works as expected, often prior to a more exhaustive round of testing.