Testing & Refining the database

• Computing
• Further Education (Key Stage 5)

Testing & Refining the database

Unit 2 - Creating Systems to Manage Information

By the end of todays lesson you should be able to:

1. Identify the steps involved in testing a database.

2. Execute strategies to test and refine a database effectively.

3. Evaluate the effectiveness of a database through testing.

Why do you think we should test databases?

What is Database Testing?

Types of Tests

  Normal – This is data which can be considered the ordinary/typical (normal) type of data you would expect to be input to the field and that should be accepted.

Username: john_doe

Password: Password123!

Email: [e-mail]

Date of Birth: 15/05/1990

Phone Number: [phone]

Types of Tests

Erroneous – This is data that is incorrect for this field (e.g. a text value in a number field) and should be rejected with a suitable error message.

Username: john@doe (contains invalid character @)

Password: pass (too short, does not meet complexity requirements)

Email: john.doe@com (invalid email format)

Date of Birth: 25/12/2025 (future date)

Phone Number: 12345 (too short, invalid format)

Types of Tests

Extreme test data includes values that are at the boundaries of acceptable input ranges or beyond, to test the application’s limits.

Username: a_very_long_username_exceeding_the_maximum_length_limit

Password: P@ssw0rd!P@ssw0rd!P@ssw0rd!P@ssw0rd!P@ssw0rd! (extremely long password)

Email: [e-mail]

Date of Birth: 01/01/1900 (very old date)

Phone Number: +4412345678901234567890 (exceedingly long phone number)

Example Test Data

Common Database Errors

A common error in a database is when a field can be left blank.

Another common error is data that is in the wrong format.

Sometimes we have data in a database that is outside of the range we are looking for

Select the option that is not considered normal test data:

1. Brown
2. Blue
3. Red
4. Small

_______ test data includes values that are at the boundaries of acceptable input ranges or beyond, to test the application’s limits.

1. Extreme
2. Normal
3. Erroneous
4. Small

This is data which can be considered the ordinary/typical type of data you would expect to be input to the field and that should be accepted.

1. Extreme
2. Normal
3. Erroneous
4. Small

Which option would be considered extreme for a username field?

1. Sam123
2. MacSam
3. Samisthemostamazingteachereverandshouldalwaysteachus2
4. samtheman4

Demonstration

Class Activity – Jan22 Database

Help

You can find the database in the shared folder under Testing folder. It is called Jan22_PartA

Implementing Fixes

Student Surname

  

Subject Level

Implementing Fixes

Student Surname – IS NOT NULL

Subject Level – Between 1 and 3

You should now be able to:

1. Identify the steps involved in testing a database.

2. Execute strategies to test and refine a database effectively.

3. Evaluate the effectiveness of a database through testing.

What was one thing you learnt from todays lesson?

What was one thing you found challenging in todays lesson?

On a scale from 1 to 10 (1 being really bad and 10 being awesome), did you enjoy todays lesson?

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