Question

I have been trying to understand these but every article, wiki etc. says something else. My understanding is that:
Functional test means testing of a new functionality in isolation and against docs. Or maybe also exploratory testing?
Funcional testing means validating the application as a whole against specifications only from functional point of view.

And from book, functional testing is said to be a part of System testing when the whole app is tested and checked against Functinal Requirements or design documents.

Could anyone experienced in this field make it clear for me?
Thank you

Answer 1

Functional testing is a type of testing, whereas system testing defines the scope of the test. The two are orthogonal concepts, though functional tests are usually performed on the system as a whole (hence the confusion in some people’s minds).

Functional test – a test for a single function of the system

Functional testing – perfoming functional tests

Functional tests can be performed on any part of the system – e.g. individual classes or clusters of classes, sub-systems – or the system as a whole.

System testing – performing tests on the system as a whole, as opposed to a unit or module. These might be functional tests, usability tests, exploratory tests etc.

Also note that the distinction between tests and requirements documentation is blurred with frameworks such as Concordion allowing documentation to define and perform functional tests.