What is integration testing and its types

When you start an enterprise, one of the most important aspects is software development and testing. It is important to understand the proper execution of software components as well as proper interfacing between components within the solution. This is when software system testing comes into picture. There are various layers to system testing and one of it is integration testing. Integration Testing is a stage of the software testing process where individual units are combined and tested as a group. It tests integration or interfaces between components, interactions to different parts of the system such as an operating system, file system and hardware or interfaces between systems.

Over a period of time, agencies have evolved to include individual mix tests for softwares. This evolution has been brought upon due to more and more customer facing systems getting digitized, consumerization of IT and growing complexity due to multiple-point and multi-vendor systems integration. Thus, many agencies offer independent testing services to enterprises looking out for individual testing components. This reduces the system dependency on each other since most of them are individual units and do not interfere in each other’s functioning.

In an enterprise, it is important to establish whether the system components interact with each other to the specification or not as typical software project consists of multiple software modules, coded by different programmers. Thus, Software testing services help to eliminate any risk to your system modules on a whole. It involves different layers of testing after which your software is deemed fit for functional use in an organization. The goal here is to ensure that the data crossing the boundary between systems is received, stored and used appropriately by the receiving system.

Integration is a key software development life cycle (SDLC) strategy which combines different software’s or system to test them as a whole. For example you have to test the keyboard of a computer than it is a unit testing but when you have to merge the keyboard and mouse of a computer together to see its working or not than it is the integration testing. Its main purpose is to authenticate that all the element dependencies of software are functionally correct and that there is preservation of reliability between separate modules for the complete solution. It focuses on testing all the automated aspects of a solution as well as the integration touch points.