Sanity Testing Techniques and Tools | The Ultimate Guide

What is Sanity Testing?

It is a subset of regression testing. After receiving a software build, run a sanity check to ensure the introduced code changes work as expected. 

• It follows a broad and narrow approach with detailed testing of some limited features. 

• It is mainly non-scripted and a subset of Regression Testing.

• Sanity testing is a high-level assessment designed to ensure the reliability of your application. This testing is focused explicitly on test cases.

• It is used to prove that the software application works according to the requirements mentioned in the specified documents and to check whether the application is built according to user needs. 

A procedure of testing early, testing regular, test everywhere, and automate. Click to explore about our, Continuous Testing in DevOps

How does Sanity Testing work?

This is executed at an end in a software development Lifecycle. It helps to check whether the added new functionality works according to requirements. If a newly added functionality is not working according to requirement, then, in that case, it fails. If a newly added functionality to a system and web application works according to a requirement, then the Sanity test passes. When the Sanity test passes, complete system testing is carried out to check that newly added functionality to an application will not affect the previously present system and application components.

Benefits of Sanity Testing 

The benefits of Sanity Testing are listed below:

• It helps to avoid waste of time.
• It helps to save costs in testing even if the build fails.
• In this type of testing, the tester directly rejects the build upon failure.

Sanity Testing vs Regression Testing vs Smoke Testing

The difference between regression, Smoke, and Sanity testing is the most misunderstood topic in Software Testing. The differences are stated below.

Sanity Testing vs. Smoke Testing

• Sanity test has the goal of checking reasonability, whereas the smoke test has the goal of checking stability.
• Testers do sanity tests, and both developers and testers do Smoke tests.
• Sanity tests verify new features such as bug fixes, and Smoke tests verify the system's critical functionality.
• Sanity tests are a subset of regression tests, and Smoking tests are a subset of acceptance tests.

Sanity Testing vs. Regression Testing:

• It is part of Regression Testing, whereas Regression Testing is independent testing.

• It is often performed manually, and Regression testing is preferred for automation.

• It is run to verify the stability of new features or code changes in existing builds. Regression testing is performed to verify the stability of all areas affected by functional or code changes.

What is Sanity Testing in Software Testing?

It is a type of software testing run after receiving a software build with minor changes to code or functionality. We executed these when we received a software build (with minor code changes) from the development team.

Why does Sanity Testing matter?

After completing Regression testing, this testing comes into practice. It was executed to check that the defect fixes and changes made to the software were not breaking the software's functionality. It is a narrow and profound approach to testing, focusing on limited and main testing features.

The variety of methods, tools, and practices used to justify that a software application works at many different levels or not. Click to explore about, Automation Testing

How to adopt Sanity Testing?

Sanity Testing occurs whenever the tester receives a software build with minor issues in code or functionality. Then, it is checked whether bugs reported in a previous build are fixed or not. These fixes can introduce regressions. So, the main aim of this testing is to check that the planned functionality is working as per expectations. This helps execute it instead of doing whole regression testing.

Why does this testing have to be adapted, or what conditions are required for this testing?

The big releases are generally planned and executed correctly and systematically. But sometimes, minor releases ask to be delivered as soon as possible. In such situations, teams didn't get much time to document the test cases, then execute them, do the documentation for the bugs, and finally do the regression and follow the whole process. Here, for such situations, some things must be kept in mind. These things which are required are explained as follows -

• Perform Dev-QA Testing.

• Whatever bugs are found, report them.

• If performance, stress, or load testing is required, a proper automation framework must be established. Predictive analytics for food safety are behind this, and it is nearly impossible to test these things manually using a sanity test.

This is the most important and last part of this testing strategy - While drafting the release email or the document, mention the in the following way-

• Contains all the executed test cases.

• Bugs found with a status marker.

• If anything is left untested, mention this point with reasons.

Functional testing verifies that system should perform as expected when its features exercised by some other system or directly by a user. Click to explore about, Functional Testing Benefits

Best Practices of Sanity Testing

The best practices of Sanity Testing are listed below:

• Keep tests concise: Ensure sanity tests are focused and efficient, avoiding excessive steps or unnecessary details.

• Prioritize key features: Concentrate on testing the application's most critical functionalities.

• Utilize automation tools: Leverage automation tools to enhance the efficiency and execution of sanity tests.

• Document results: Track the outcomes of each sanity test to monitor the application's health and identify patterns.

• Update test cases regularly: Continuously review and update test cases as the application evolves to maintain their relevance and effectiveness.

Benefits of Sanity Testing Tools

Based on the search results, here are the key benefits of using sanity testing tools:

1. Efficiency and Time Savings

• Automated sanity testing tools can execute tests much faster than manual testing.

• They help avoid the time and effort required to set up and execute repetitive sanity checks.

• Automated tools ensure sanity tests are executed consistently, reducing the risk of human error.

• They provide reliable and repeatable results, making it easier to identify regressions.

• Automated sanity testing tools can cover a wider range of test scenarios than manual testing.

• They enable testing across multiple platforms, browsers, and devices.

• Sanity testing tools help identify critical bugs and issues early in the development cycle.

• This allows for faster remediation and prevents costly rework later on.

5. Continuous Integration and Deployment

•  Automated sanity testing can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines to validate each build.

•  This ensures new functionality doesn't break existing system components.

Compressive Approach

Sanity testing is a subset of regression testing, and it is used for software testing to perform some basic tests. To execute this testing appropriately, we recommend the following steps.

• Get an insight into Shift Testing
• Explore more about Software Development Services and Solutions