Non-functional testing is the testing of a software application for its non-functional requirements

Non-functional requirements

In systems engineering and requirements engineering, a non-functional requirement is a requirement that specifies criteria that can be used to judge the operation of a system, rather than specific behaviors. This should be contrasted with functional requirements that define specific behavior or...

. The names of many non-functional tests are often used interchangeably because of the overlap in scope between various non-functional requirements. For example, software performance

Performance Engineering

Performance engineering within systems engineering, encompasses the set of roles, skills, activities, practices, tools, and deliverables applied at every phase of the Systems Development Life Cycle which ensures that a solution will be designed, implemented, and operationally supported to meet the...

 is a broad term that includes many specific requirements like reliability

Reliability engineering

Reliability engineering is an engineering field, that deals with the study, evaluation, and life-cycle management of reliability: the ability of a system or component to perform its required functions under stated conditions for a specified period of time. It is often measured as a probability of...

 and scalability

Scalability

In electronics scalability is the ability of a system, network, or process, to handle growing amount of work in a graceful manner or its ability to be enlarged to accommodate that growth...

.

Non-functional testing includes:

• Baseline testing
• Compatibility testing
  Compatibility testing
  Compatibility testing, part of software non-functional tests, is testing conducted on the application to evaluate the application's compatibility with the computing environment...
  
  
• Compliance testing
• Documentation testing
• Endurance testing
• Load testing
  Load testing
  Load testing is the process of putting demand on a system or device and measuring its response. Load testing is performed to determine a system’s behavior under both normal and anticipated peak load conditions. It helps to identify the maximum operating capacity of an application as well as any...
  
  
• Localization testing
  Localization testing
  Localization testing is a part of software testing process focused on internationalization and localization aspects of software. Localization is the process of adapting a globalized application to a particular culture/locale...
  
   and Internationalization testing
• Performance testing
• Recovery testing
  Recovery testing
  In software testing, recovery testing is the activity of testing how well an application is able to recover from crashes, hardware failures and other similar problems....
  
  
• Resilience testing
• Security testing
  Security Testing
  Security testing is a process to determine that an information system protects data and maintains functionality as intended.The six basic security concepts that need to be covered by security testing are: confidentiality, integrity, authentication, availability, authorization and non-repudiation...
  
  
• Scalability testing
  Scalability testing
  Scalability Testing, part of the battery of non-functional tests, is the testing of a software application for measuring its capability to scale up or scale out - in terms of any of its non-functional capability - be it the user load supported, the number of transactions, the data volume...
  
  
• Stress testing
  Stress testing
  Stress testing is a form of testing that is used to determine the stability of a given system or entity. It involves testing beyond normal operational capacity, often to a breaking point, in order to observe the results...
  
  
• Usability testing
  Usability testing
  Usability testing is a technique used in user-centered interaction design to evaluate a product by testing it on users. This can be seen as an irreplaceable usability practice, since it gives direct input on how real users use the system...
  
  
• Volume testing
  Volume testing
  Volume Testing belongs to the group of non-functional tests, which are often misunderstood and/or used interchangeably. Volume testing refers to testing a software application with a certain amount of data. This amount can, in generic terms, be the database size or it could also be the size of an...
  
  

See also

• Functional testing
  Functional testing
  Functional testing is a type of black box testing that bases its test cases on the specifications of the software component under test. Functions are tested by feeding them input and examining the output, and internal program structure is rarely considered .Functional testing differs from system...