What is compatibility?

 What is compatibility?

Compatibility is nothing but the abilities that exist or live together. 

What is compatibility testing?

Compatibility testing is a type of software testing to check whether your software is able to run on hardware, operating systems, applications, network environment or cellular devices.

Compatibility testing is a type of non-functional testing

Type of compatibility test

TUTORIAL Testing Compatibility: Advanced Testing & Backward

Let's look at the type of compatibility testing

Hardware: This checks the software to be compatible with different hardware configurations.

Operating System: It checks your software to be compatible with different operating systems such as Windows, UNIX, Mac OS etc.

Software: It checks your software developed to be compatible with other software. For example, the MS Word application must be compatible with other software such as MS Outlook, MS Excel, VBA etc.

Network: Performance evaluation of a system in the network with varied parameters such as bandwidth, operating speed, capacity. It also checks the application on various networks with all the parameters mentioned earlier.

Device: It checks your software compatibility with different devices such as USB port devices, printers and scanners, other media devices and blue teeth.

Mobile: Check your software compatible with cellular platforms such as Android, iOS etc.

Software version: It verifies your software application to be compatible with different software versions. For example checking your Microsoft Word to be compatible with Windows 7, Windows 7 SP1, Windows 7 SP2, Windows 7 SP3.

There are two types of inspection version in compatibility testing:

TUTORIAL Testing Compatibility: Advanced Testing & Backward

Testing compatibility retreat

Retreat compatibility testing is a technique for verifying the behavior and compatibility of hardware or software developed with longer hardware or software versions. Retreat compatibility testing is very predictable because all changes from the previous version are known.

Advanced compatibility testing

Advanced compatibility testing is the process of verifying the behavior and compatibility of hardware or software developed with a newer version of hardware or software. Future compatibility testing is rather difficult to predict as a change that will be made in a newer version unknown.

Tool for Compatibility Testing

TUTORIAL Testing Compatibility: Advanced Testing & Backward

Browserstack - Testing browser compatibility: This tool helps a software engineer to check applications in various browsers.

Virtual Desktops - Operating System Compatibility: It is used to run applications in several operating systems as virtual machines. N The number of systems can be connected and compare the results.

How to test compatibility

The initial phase of compatibility testing is to determine the environmental set or the application platform is expected to work.

Testers must have sufficient knowledge about the platform/hardware / hardware to understand the behavior of applications expected in different configurations.

The environment needs to be set for testing with platforms, devices, different networks to check whether your application runs well under different configurations.

Report bugs. Fix defects. Repeat to confirm defective repairs.