Why Regression Testing Matters: A Look at Different Types and Their Tools

Software testing is a very important part of the software development process. This helps to ensure that a program or an app works just as you would expect. Among many types of testing, one kind that holds special importance is regression testing. In simple words, regression testing makes sure that changes made recently in the software do not break any existing functionality. Regression testing is essential to ensure that previously developed functionalities are not disturbed when software is updated or new features are added. Now, let’s dive into what regression testing is, why it matters, and some popular tools used for it.

What is Regression Testing?

Regression testing is the process of checking whether new changes, say adding a new feature or bug fix haven’t disrupted other parts of the application. A building analogy may be useful: every time you add a new room, you want to ensure that its foundation doesn’t go unstable. Analogously, when developers add some new feature or make a fix, regression testing helps ensure these updates haven’t affected other parts.

Types of Regression Testing

Regression testing ensures that the new changes brought into the software have not adversely affected the functionality in place so far. Some popular regression testing types follow below : 

• Corrective Regression Testing: Focuses on correcting defects found after a software patch.
• Progressive Regression Testing: It is actually done each time new features are added, that it verifies if the old features are still working correctly.
• Selective Regression Testing: This refers to the testing of that segment of software that has been newly modified.
• Complete Regression Testing: This type of testing involves running all parts of the software system in order to check if nothing has broken.
• Partial Regression Testing: It checks only parts of the modules instead of the entire system.

Why Regression Testing?

Regression testing has many important reasons:

• Maintain software quality: It ensures that code changes never break some previously working functionalities. In the long-run, it maintains the quality of the software.
• Improve user experience: Bugs that revisit due to new changes frustrate users. Chances that bugs may revisit are few through regression testing, with a better user experience in the end.
• Saves Time and Resources: Finding bugs early in the process is cheaper and easier than after they are released. Such problems can be caught by doing frequent regression testing in the process, saving a lot of time and resources later on.
• Ensures Product Consistency: The update should ideally add more value to the product and not break the existing functions. Regression testing helps the product maintain consistency with changes.

Famous Regression Testing Tools

Regression testing in huge applications can be hard; many tools have been developed in aid of the process as a whole. Below are a few famous regression testing tools: 

Selenium

As Selenium is an open-source tool, test scripts are automated across different browsers using Selenium. Selenium supports multiple programming languages and is used widely in industries to do regression testing.

Jenkins

It is integrated with tools that are mainly used for regression testing tools. A lot of people make it really handy. They are of big help since it gives easy ways on how the CI can get an integrated result when making an automatic way for regression tests, including this into development.

QTP-Quick Test Professional

UFT, or rather QTP, is a product developed by Micro Focus. It is a user-friendly tool and allows for the automation of test cases. That is where it becomes suitable for big projects that require regression testing constantly.

TestComplete

TestComplete is a regression testing tool developed for desktop, web, and mobile application testing. It supports multiple scripting languages, and it provides test automation that is simple and efficient in large-scale regression testing projects.

Appium

It is an open-source tool that deals mainly with mobile applications. The tool can support both Android and iOS applications. This tool enables one to automate the testing of functionalities on mobile applications. It is widely used for regression testing in mobile application development.

Rational Functional Tester (RFT)

This is an automated testing tool from IBM, which supports regression testing for complex software applications. RFT allows for the development of automation scripts and supports multiple platforms.

Conclusion

Regression testing is considered to be very essential and helpful in maintaining the stability, reliability, and good quality of any software application. This way, businesses always avoid reaching issues to the level of users by testing updates upon the existing features at regularly interval. With different varieties of regression testing and extensive tools, software teams look for the right mix and right amount of testing approaches that keep their products alive and running and make all the users happy.

As a whole, whether it be some simple software update or even big feature addition, regression testing ensures that everything just keeps working as expected-in short, the most important step in any software development.