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The Textpad application

In Figure 1.2 Textpad is shown editing both a HTML and Java
document in two windows. Notice that it provides syntax
highlighting features to these different file formats.

Developers of editing tools such as this would need to put the

application through a rigorous process to test all these advanced
features.

Software Development Life Cycle

The development of software applications is based on a lifecycle
process known as the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
SDLC is a software engineering process that provides information
about steps that need to be taken to advance a software project
from concept to deployment. SDLC is broken into 5 phases with
each phase dependent upon results from the preceding phase.
Each phase also specifies what must happen during that portion
of the software process. The testing process, which we are

primarily concerned with in this book, is the fourth phase in the
SDLC process.

SDLC helps describe an approach which, when followed

properly, ensures that applications meet both the functional and
visual requirements stipulated in their creation documents. The
stages contained within the SDLC process include:

Requirements Analysis The gathering of details about what

needs to be done, and how the application should perform
those tasks. This phase is handled by Business Analysts (BA)
who must meet with all the stakeholders in the application
to capture all the needs and details of what they want the
application to do. The most difficult part of this process is
ensuring that the requirements are:

Complete containing all necessary functionalities needed

by the users.

Nonconflicting Often with a large user base it is easy to

have a group of users need a feature that conflicts
with features needed by other users. This must be
negotiated during this stage because the application
cannot be built with conflicting requirements.