Compatibility Testing

Testing the application on different hardware and software platforms is known as compatibility testing.

Whenever the Test engineer has to check for the compatibility test with respect to different OS(Operating System) and browsers, then first a base platform is selected after testing the functionality of the application with respect to base platform the test engineer login to the one physical machine in which the VM ware software is installed, by using VM ware we can divide one machine into multiple machines, the test engineer access the machine remotely to access the desktop of that physical machine with the help of username and password.

What is VM ware?

It is a software with the help of which one physical machine can be divided into multiple virtual machines and these machines can be accessed simultaneously.

Why Compatibility Testing?

Once the application is given to the end users, they may access the application from different hardware and software platforms and during this process they may face some compatibility issues, as we dont have the access to the end users machines,to catch this we do Compatibility Testing.

Challenging Things in Compatibility Testing:

1.To Test the application for all the combinations of OS(Operating System) and browsers.

2.We choose the software for Compatibility Testing based on most commonly used.

3.Compatibility Testing should be done when the application is functionally stable.

Compatibility Issues:

If the feature or the application works on one platform but not working on the other platform we call it as Compatibility Issues.

Generally we test for the following Compatibility Issues:

1.Allignment Issues.
2.Scattered Issues.
3.Overlapped objects.
4.Color and Font sizes.
5.Broken Links.

Types of Compatibility Testing:

1.Forward Compatibility Testing - Testing the application on new versions of OS and browsers is called Forward Compatibility Testing.

For eg: Win XP --> Win 7 --> Win 8
IE 8.0 --> I.E 9.0 --> I.E 10.0

2.Backward Compatibility Testing - Testing the application on old versions of OS and browsers is called backward Compatibility Testing.

For eg: Win XP <-- Win 7 <-- Win 8
IE 8.0 <-- I.E 9.0 <-- I.E 10.0