CAST - Testing Specialized Technologies Questions and Answers 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A team is testing a new mobile application. During a test run, an incoming phone call is simulated while the user is in the middle of a transaction. The goal is to verify that the application correctly saves its state and resumes the transaction without data loss after the call ends. What is this type of testing called?
- Usability Testing
- Compatibility Testing
- Interrupt Testing (Correct answer)
- Recovery Testing
Correct answer: Interrupt Testing
Interrupt Testing is a specific type of mobile application testing that evaluates how an application responds to and handles external events like phone calls, text messages, or low battery notifications. The key objective is to ensure the app can pause, save its state, and resume gracefully without a negative impact on the user experience.
Question 2: A security tester is attempting to exploit a vulnerability in a web application's login form. By entering a fragment of a database query into the username field, the tester aims to trick the server into executing the malicious query and revealing sensitive data. Which of the following vulnerabilities is being tested?
- Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
- SQL Injection (SQLi) (Correct answer)
- Denial of Service (DoS)
- Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Correct answer: SQL Injection (SQLi)
SQL Injection (SQLi) is a code injection technique where malicious SQL statements are inserted into an data entry field to be executed by the backend database. This can lead to unauthorized data access, data modification, or other destructive attacks. The scenario described is a classic example of an SQLi attempt.
Question 3: A performance testing team needs to determine the absolute breaking point of a system. They plan to steadily increase the number of virtual users far beyond the expected peak load until the system crashes or response times become unacceptable. Which specific type of performance testing are they conducting?
- Load Testing
- Soak Testing
- Spike Testing
- Stress Testing (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Stress Testing
Stress Testing is designed to determine a system's stability and robustness by testing it beyond its normal operational capacity. The primary goal is to find the system's breaking point and observe how it recovers from failure, which is exactly what the scenario describes.
Question 4: When testing a RESTful API, a tester sends a POST request to create a new user resource. The request is well-formed, and the server successfully creates the user in the database. According to HTTP standards, which status code should the API ideally return to indicate this specific outcome?
- 200 OK
- 400 Bad Request
- 201 Created (Correct answer)
- 500 Internal Server Error
Correct answer: 201 Created
The HTTP status code `201 Created` is the most appropriate response for a successful request that results in the creation of a new resource on the server. While `200 OK` indicates general success, `201 Created` is more specific and is the standard for successful POST requests that create a resource.
Question 5: Which of the following presents the MOST significant and unique challenge when testing an Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem compared to a traditional enterprise web application?
- Ensuring the user interface is responsive on different screen sizes.
- Validating complex business logic within the application layer.
- Managing the interoperability of diverse hardware, firmware, and network protocols. (Correct answer)
- Automating regression tests for the database schema.
Correct answer: Managing the interoperability of diverse hardware, firmware, and network protocols.
The primary challenge unique to IoT testing is the immense diversity and heterogeneity of the components involved. An IoT ecosystem consists of various devices with different hardware, operating systems, firmware, and communication protocols (e.g., Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee) that must all interoperate seamlessly with backend services, making compatibility and integration testing extremely complex.
Question 6: In the context of testing a data warehouse, what is the primary goal of validating the 'Transform' stage of an ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) process?
- To verify that all required data was successfully copied from the source systems.
- To ensure the transformed data has been loaded into the target warehouse without loss.
- To check that data cleansing, aggregation, and business rules have been correctly applied. (Correct answer)
- To confirm that the source database and target warehouse schemas are identical.
Correct answer: To check that data cleansing, aggregation, and business rules have been correctly applied.
The 'Transform' stage in ETL is where the main data conversion and manipulation happens. ETL testing for this stage focuses on verifying that business rules, data cleansing routines, aggregations, and data type conversions are applied correctly to the extracted data before it is loaded into the target system.
A team is testing a new mobile application.
During a test run, an incoming phone call is simulated while the user is in the middle of a transaction.
The goal is to verify that the application correctly saves its state and resumes the transaction without data loss after the call ends.
What is this type of testing called?