What does regression test mean?
Solution 1:
Regression test is a test that is performed to make sure that previously working functionality still works, after changes elsewhere in the system. Wikipedia article is pretty good at explaining what it is.
Your unit tests are automatically regression tests, and that's one of their biggest advantages. Once those tests are written, they will be run in future, whenever you add new functionality or change existing functionality. You don't need to explicitly write regression tests.
Solution 2:
Notwithstanding the old joke, "Congress" is not the opposite of "progress;" "regress" is. For your code to regress is for it to "move backward," typically meaning that some bad behavior it once had, which you fixed, has come back. A "regression" is the return of a bug (although there can be other interpretations). A regression test, therefore, is a test that validates that you have fixed the bug, and one that you run periodically to ensure that your fix is still in place, still working.
Solution 3:
The word regression as coined by Francis Galton means
Regression: The act of going back
I.e. it is the phenomenon/technique in software testing to check any change / bug fixes hasn't impacted the existing functionality of the system. Thus the intent of regression testing is to ensure that a change, such as a bug fix should not result in another fault being uncovered in the application.
Regression Testing is required when
- there is a change in requirements and code is modified according to the requirement
- a new feature is added to the software
- defects are fixed
- a performance issue is fixed
Regression testing can be done both manually and automated.
These are some tools for the automation approach:
- QTP
- AdventNet QEngine
- Regression Tester
- vTest
- Watir
- Selenium
- actiWate
- Rational Functional Tester
- SilkTest
Solution 4:
During a regression test, testers run through your application testing features that were known to work in the previous build.
They look specifically for parts of the application that may not have been directly modified, but depend on (and could have residual bugs from) code that was modified.
Those bugs (ones caused by bugs in dependent code even though they were working before) are known as regressions (because the feature was working properly and now has a bug...and therefore, regressed).