Testing Practice Questions

Question 1

In program construction, what is the purpose of a 'test plan'?

Accepted Answer

To define a set of test cases that will be used to verify the program works correctly — A test plan outlines the testing strategy, including test cases, inputs, expected outputs, and conditions. It is used to systematically verify that the program meets its requirements. It is not about writing code, UI, or optimization.

Question 2

In the context of the WJEC Applied ICT course, what is the primary purpose of 'user acceptance testing' (UAT)?

Accepted Answer

To ensure the system meets the agreed requirements and is fit for purpose from the user's perspective — UAT is the final phase of testing where actual users test the system in a real-world scenario to confirm it meets their needs and the original requirements. It is not about debugging (that's system testing), performance testing, or security testing, though those are other types of tests.

Question 3

A technician is writing a function to calculate the average of a list of numbers. Which testing approach is most effective to ensure correctness?

Accepted Answer

Use a mix of normal cases, edge cases (empty list, single element), and invalid inputs (non-numeric) to verify behavior. — Effective testing covers a range of inputs: normal, boundary, and invalid. Edge cases like empty lists often reveal errors (e.g., division by zero). Invalid inputs test error handling. Testing only typical or extreme cases misses many bugs.

Question 4

A developer is writing code to handle a user input that must be a positive integer. Which type of testing would be most appropriate to ensure the program correctly rejects invalid inputs?

Accepted Answer

Boundary value analysis — Boundary value analysis is a black-box testing technique that focuses on the boundaries of input ranges (e.g., 0, 1, and very large numbers). It is specifically designed to find errors at the edges of input domains, which is where many bugs occur. Alpha testing is performed by internal teams before release, white-box testing examines internal logic, and integration testing checks interactions between modules.

Question 5

During the testing phase of a new system, a tester enters invalid data to see if the system handles it gracefully. What type of testing is this?

Accepted Answer

Error/exception testing — Error/exception testing involves deliberately entering invalid or unexpected data to ensure the system can handle errors without crashing. Boundary testing checks values at the edges of input ranges, while integration testing checks interactions between modules.

Question 6

When adding a new feature to an existing software product, what is the most important step to ensure the change does not introduce new bugs?

Accepted Answer

Writing and running regression tests — Regression testing ensures that new changes do not break existing functionality. It is crucial because changes can have unintended side effects. Testing only the new feature or skipping tests increases the risk of introducing bugs.

Testing

Subtopics in this area

Testing Revision Guide

Learning Objectives

Sample Exam Questions

Related Topics in OCR GCSE Computer Science

Additional programming techniques

Boolean logic

Programming fundamentals

Primary storage (memory)