Quality Assurance Companies: Application of Equivalence Technology
Application of equivalence technology
Testing of mathematical functions is not the only capability of the standard programs. Quality assurance companies can test a variety of behavioral aspects of the program by comparing it with the finished and tested products. Here are a few examples.
- If a spell check program is being developed, which implements exactly the same algorithm that is used in one of the existing programs, you can request them to check the same set of words.
- If you are developing a program for automatic hyphenation of words and especially if there are modifications made to its algorithm which could be applied to another language to robustly handle its constructs, for comparison purposes, you need to have a tested program sold in the same market. Prepare a narrow column of text and offer it to both of the programs.
- With the program performing text alignment with respect to the line width, you must check whether it evenly breaks up a string of the words with spaces. You can take an ordinary word processor, as the sample, and offer to both of the programs the same text typed using the same fonts.
Independent software testing companies are able to cope with different amount of testing work no matter how complicated it is. At that, you will be provided with the most accurate data on the product quality. You had better use the services of independent software testing companies to reduce costs and accelerate time to market.
- To debug escape sequences that are sent to the printer you can redirect the output to a file and do the same in the original program by printing exactly the same document within it. Then, both files can be compared – they must be identical.
The technology is indispensable in all cases when it is necessary to test the output data that can be easily sent to a file, and another program is used, the one which is able to generate the same data. Their results can be easily compared. Certainly, in each case, there may different arguments “for” and “against” the technology. For example, its implementation may require too much time, money or effort. In addition, the original program may contain errors too. But in any case, the equivalence technology should be taken into account – in many cases, its application significantly accelerates the work and greatly increases its effectiveness.
Do not forget to include output data in bug reports, received from both programs. They are very important to identify the cause of error. Performance testing companies will be glad to examine your software to understand how certain aspect of the program functions under expected workload.