What is Interface Testing and why do we need it?

When you develop any software or a website, it embraces different components in it, such as database, server, etc. The connection that helps you to establish communication among these components is termed as an Interface. Interface Testing is a type of software testing, which verifies the communication between two software systems. This blog will help you understand what is Interface testing in the following sequence:

• What is Interface Testing
• Phases of Interface Testing
• Steps involved in Interface Testing
• Why do we need Interface Testing
• Approach for Interface Testing

Let’s begin!

What is Interface Testing?

Interface Testing is a kind of software testing which verifies the communication between two different software systems. It checks the authentication of the connection established.

Interface Testing includes testing of two main segments

• Web server and application server interface

• Application server and Database server interface

Now, after understanding the meaning let us learn about different phases that Interface Testing possesses!

Phases of Interface Testing

There are three phases of Interface testing in an Interface lifecycle. Let me elaborate on the phases:

Configuration and Development:

After the configuration of the interface and the development initialization, the configuration is needed to be verified as per the requirement. In simple words, verification takes place.

Validation

After the configuration and development stage, validation of the interface is necessary.

Maintenance

After the completion of the project, when the project reaches it’s working stage, the interface is set to be monitored for its performance.

One thing that has to be kept in mind is that the code should be defect-free, to interrogate this, tests have to be conducted to verify that any added code doesn’t bring defects with it.

After the accomplishment of the work, validation of data and workflow takes place. So, it’s important to maintain the authenticity of the program.

Now that you know what is Interface testing and the different phase, let’s move onto our next topic.

Steps involved in Interface Testing

There are certain steps that are involved in the process of Interface Testing. I will explain them one by one.

1. Unit Testing: It tests the functionality of an individual part of the program. It makes sure every part of the programs runs well and is properly aligned with the software.

2. Functional Testing: It tests the functionality while test case creation, validation etc

3. Security Testing: It tests the security mechanism. It includes penetration testing along with validating access control, encryption etc.

4. Load Testing: By using functional test cases, it validates the performance under load.

5. Runtime error detection: It tackles the problems of runtime race, resource leak etc.

6. Workflow Testing: It is done to make sure that the interface engine handles the workflow well.

Moving further, let us understand the reason as to why we need Interface Testing?

Why do we need Interface Testing?

Enumerating the list below in order to understand the need for Interface Testing:

1. To ensure that the end-users or customers should not encounter any problem while using a particular software.
2. To identify which application areas are usually accessed by end-users and to check if they are user-friendly.
3. To verify the security requirements while communication propagates between the systems
4. To check if a solution is capable of handling network failures between an application server and website
5. To make sure that the software is proficient in error handling.

After grasping these points let us understand what should be kept in mind while performing interface testing!

Approach for Interface Testing

Following are the points that you need to remember in order to perform a successful interface testing. You should:

1. Define your requirements properly

2. Start building small codes and then testing them, instead of directly jumping on making large pieces of codes

3. Find some automation tools

4. Mark the start and the stop points, that will eventually help you in checking the performance of the test

Now with this, we come to an end to this “What is Interface Testing” blog. I hope you guys enjoyed this article and understood what is interface testing and how it works. 

Now that you have understood testing, check out the Software Testing Fundamentals Course by Edureka. This course is designed to introduce you to the complete software testing life-cycle. You will be learning different levels of testing, test environment setup, test case design technique, test data creation, test execution, bug reporting, CI/CD pipeline in DevOps, and other essential concepts of software testing. 

Got a question for us? Please mention it in the comments section of “What is Interface Testing” and we will get back to you.