Software Quality Assurance Practice Exam

What type of system testing ensures the entire system works as a whole?

1. Unit testing

2. Black-box testing

3. Functional testing

4. Integration testing

The correct answer is: Integration testing

Integration testing is designed to ensure that individual components or modules of a system work together as a functional whole. This type of testing goes beyond examining individual pieces of software to verify how they interact, ensuring that data flows correctly between them and that the combined functionality meets specifications. During integration testing, the focus is on the interfaces and interactions between integrated components, allowing testers to identify issues that arise when these software parts are combined, such as communication problems, data mismatches, and overall interaction errors. Successful integration testing confirms that the system as a whole reliably performs its intended functions, which is essential for system stability and performance in a real-world environment. Other testing types mentioned, like unit testing, focus on individual components in isolation, whereas functional testing evaluates specific functionalities against requirements, and black-box testing assesses outputs based on specific inputs without considering the internal workings of the application. These approaches are important but do not specifically test the entire system's ability to function cohesively.