What is the difference between smoke testing and sanity testing?

Question

What is the difference between smoke testing and sanity testing? When do will perform smoke testing and when do will perform sanity testing?

Answer 1

Sanity testing

Sanity testing is the subset of regression testing and it is performed when we do not have enough time for doing testing.

Sanity testing is the surface level testing where QA engineer verifies that all the menus, functions, commands available in the product and project are working fine.

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Example

For example, in a project there are 5 modules: Login Page, Home Page, User's Details Page, New User Creation and Task Creation.

Suppose we have a bug in the login page: the login page's username field accepts usernames which are shorter than 6 alphanumeric characters, and this is against the requirements, as in the requirements it is specified that the username should be at least 6 alphanumeric characters.

Now the bug is reported by the testing team to the developer team to fix it. After the developing team fixes the bug and passes the app to the testing team, the testing team also checks the other modules of the application in order to verify that the bug fix does not affect the functionality of the other modules. But keep one point always in mind: the testing team only checks the extreme functionality of the modules, it does not go deep to test the details because of the short time.

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Sanity testing is performed after the build has cleared the smoke tests and has been accepted by QA team for further testing. Sanity testing checks the major functionality with finer details.

Sanity testing is performed when the development team needs to know quickly the state of the product after they have done changes in the code, or there is some controlled code changed in a feature to fix any critical issue, and stringent release time-frame does not allow complete regression testing.

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Smoke testing

Smoke Testing is performed after a software build to ascertain that the critical functionalities of the program are working fine. It is executed "before" any detailed functional or regression tests are executed on the software build.

The purpose is to reject a badly broken application, so that the QA team does not waste time installing and testing the software application.

In smoke testing, the test cases chosen cover the most important functionalities or components of the system. The objective is not to perform exhaustive testing, but to verify that the critical functionalities of the system are working fine. For example, typical smoke tests would be:

• verify that the application launches successfully,
• Check that the GUI is responsive

Answer 2

Smoke testing

Smoke testing came from the hardware environment where testing should be done to check whether the development of a new piece of hardware causes no fire and smoke for the first time.

In the software environment, smoke testing is done to verify whether we can consider for further testing the functionality which is newly built.

Sanity testing

A subset of regression test cases are executed after receiving a functionality or code with small or minor changes in the functionality or code, to check whether it resolved the issues or software bugs and no other software bug is introduced by the new changes.

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Difference between smoke testing and sanity testing

Smoke testing

• Smoke testing is used to test all areas of the application without going into too deep.

• A smoke test always use an automated test or a written set of tests. It is always scripted.

• Smoke testing is designed to include every part of the application in a not thorough or detailed way.

• Smoke testing always ensures whether the most crucial functions of a program are working, but not bothering with finer details.

Sanity testing

• Sanity testing is a narrow test that focuses on one or a few areas of functionality, but not thoroughly or in-depth.

• A sanity test is usually unscripted.

• Sanity testing is used to ensure that after a minor change a small part of the application is still working.

• Sanity testing is a cursory testing, which is performed to prove that the application is functioning according to the specifications. This level of testing is a subset of regression testing.

Hope these points help you to understand the difference between smoke testing and sanity testing.

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References

• http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/smoke-testing-and-sanity-testing-difference/
• https://www.guru99.com/smoke-sanity-testing.html