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Comparison Testing in Software Engineering

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When any software development takes place, a series of steps or development processes are followed to finally build a quality software product. All the activities comes under SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle)  which works as a software development framework and which is followed by the software developer/engineer team for the building of a high quality software application. In SDLC, Software Testing is an important phase which is carried out to find and fix the bugs and to build well performed good software product. 

There are different types of software testing and software testing metrics available which are performed accordingly in an aim of building a high quality software application. Various types of software testing are performed not only to identify bugs and fix it rather it helps in monitoring performance, reliability, security, scalability, usability, Easy access, UI, functionality, behavior etc. Comparison Testing is a not a major type of software testing but without comparison testing building a best software product is not possible. So let’s discuss more about this comparison testing by analyzing a little more about it.

Comparison Testing :

Comparison testing refers to a type of testing where the strength and weakness of the currently developed software produced is compared with already existing software products in the market. It helps to assess how current software product performs against the market competition along with this, the comparison testing helps for the development of a high quality software product with improved performance and functionality. 

Actually comparison testing allows to find out the loopholes of the existing software product and forces to overcome the loopholes to be ahead in competition. But creating a competitive market is not the aim of comparison testing rather it focuses on building improved software product time to time. Any part of the software application can be considered for comparison testing. That may be User Interface, Number of functionality, Speed, Database, Security and many more. Mainly these test criteria is decided based on the type of software application being tested and use-cases specific to the business requirements.

Time to perform comparison testing :

There is no specific phase for comparison testing also there is no specific guideline to perform comparison testing and it does not a particular phase of Software development. It can be performed individually or it can be carried out with other kind of software testing. But generally it is performed at three stages of software development i.e.

  1. Early stage of software development process
  2. Mid stage of the software development process
  3. Last stage of the software development process

Two Testing Criteria :

Actually when there is confusion regarding the test criteria, it undergoes two different comparison phases i.e.

  1. Compare Software application against known standards or benchmarks.
  2. Compare Software application against with specific features of other existing software products.

For example of Comparison Testing , suppose you are developing a PDF Merge software application then you have to compare your product with other PDF Merge software applications, mainly the speed of merge, performance, PDF quality of merged file etc. you will consider performing comparison testing.

Advantages of Comparison Testing :

  • It can tell the weaknesses and strengths of your application.
  • It helps in evaluating quality of the software product.
  • It tells your product is how much competitive and useful.
  • It tells whether the software project is marketable or not.
  • It tells that the software has a fair chance to be profitable or not.
  • It helps in checking all important features of software before commercial release.
  • It helps in understanding internal design structure.
  • It helps the product in making competitive enough to perform well in the market.

Disadvantages of Comparison Testing :

  • It becomes very difficult to again modify anything or changing anything as it has already passed a series of development phases.
  • Sometimes clients create mindset against it after knowing deficiencies or weakness of your product.

Last Updated : 19 Jan, 2021
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