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Sanity Testing Techniques and Tools | The Ultimate Guide

Navdeep Singh Gill | 25 October 2022

Sanity Testing Techniques and Tools

What is Sanity Testing?

It is a subset of regression testing. After receiving a software build, run a sanity check to ensure that 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 per the requirements mentioned in the specified documents and checks whether the application is built according to user needs. 
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How does it work?

This is executed at an end in the process of a software development Lifecycle. It helps to check whether added new functionality is working according to requirements or not. 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 is working 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 functionally to an application will not affect the previously present system and application components.

What are the benefits of it?

The benefits of Sanity Testing are listed below:

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

Sanity Testing vs Regression Testing vs Smoke Testing

Regression, Smoke, and Sanity testing difference is the most misunderstood topic inSoftware 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 test verifies new features such as bug fixes, and Smoke tests verify the critical functionality of the system.
  • 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 that is run after receiving a software build with minor changes to code or functionality. These were executed when we received a software build (with minor code changes) from the development team.


Why does it matter?

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

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How to adopt it?

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. There can be a regression introduced due to these fixes. So the main aim of this testing is to check that the planned functionality is working as per expectations. This way helps to execute it instead of doing whole regression testing.

Why this testing has to be adapted or conditions where this testing is required?

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 first 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 are required to keep in mind. These things which are required are explained as follows -

  • Perform Dev-QA Testing.
  • Whatever bugs are found, report these bugs.
  • Have a proper automation framework if there is a requirement for performance testing or Stress or Load testing. The procePredictive Analytics for Food Safetyss behind this it is nearly impossible to test these things using a sanity test manually.

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.
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What are the best practices of it?

The best practices of Sanity Testing are listed below:

  • This type of testing is executed after the addition of new functionality to a system.
  • This testing is carried out once new functionality is implemented within a system.
  • Adopting this type of testing would be useless if no new functionality is added to a system.

Sanity Testing Tools

There is no way around it with any tool's help. After making changes to a part of the software, it is to check that it works as per requirements. In this, only functionality is checked by just analyzing its behavior.

Compressive Approach

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