Overview

Software compatibility testing is a testing service that verifies and evaluates a software product’s ability to run and adapt across different hardware and software environments, system components, browsers, databases, middleware and external interfaces, against the requirement specification, product description, user documentation, operating environment requirements and applicable standards. The focus includes whether the software can coexist with the target operating environment and whether it can exchange data and work together correctly with related systems, products or components.

Compatibility testing helps clients identify issues in installation and deployment, operating environment, browser adaptation, operating system adaptation, database adaptation, interface interaction, version upgrades and hardware/software coexistence, reducing adaptation risk during system launch, delivery and rollout.

The Value of Compatibility Testing

Compatibility testing is an important part of software quality evaluation. It helps clients confirm whether the software runs stably in the declared operating environment and supporting conditions, and whether it affects the normal use of other software, components or hardware.

For government bodies, enterprises and institutions, research institutes and software project owners, compatibility testing can be used for software acceptance, project delivery, quality confirmation before launch, operating environment adaptation, version upgrade verification and cross-platform deployment assessment, providing technical support for project management and quality supervision.

Testing Basis and Evaluation Dimensions

According to GB/T 25000.51-2016, Systems and software engineering — Systems and software Quality Requirements and Evaluation (SQuaRE) — Part 51: Requirements and testing details for ready-to-use software products (RUSP), the compatibility of software quality is mainly evaluated from the following aspects:

Co-existence

Verify whether the software can effectively execute its own functions while sharing a common environment and resources with other products, without significantly affecting those other products.

Co-existence testing can, as required by the project, verify how the software coexists with common antivirus software, browsers, office software, databases, middleware, operating systems, hardware devices and other applications. For software that must be installed, it can also verify installation order, component constraints, runtime resource consumption and behaviour during version upgrades, confirming that the software can be installed, run and exit normally in the target environment.

Interoperability

Verify whether two or more systems, products or components can exchange information and correctly use the information exchanged.

Interoperability testing can cover both internal and external interfaces, checking whether interface communication data formats, field contents, state transfer, data conversion, input/output handling and exception conditions meet the requirement specification or interface documentation. For software that interacts with other systems, hardware devices or platforms, it can also verify whether data exchange succeeds, whether interface responses are correct, and whether abnormal input and output are handled reasonably.

Our Capabilities

With a professional software evaluation team and standardised testing processes, Star River Quality provides third-party software compatibility testing for government bodies, enterprises and institutions, research institutes and software development companies.

We prepare a test plan to the project’s needs, design compatibility test scenarios, carry out co-existence testing, interoperability testing, browser adaptation testing, operating system adaptation testing, database and middleware adaptation testing and hardware/software combination testing, and record, analyse and report the issues found.

After testing, Star River Quality can issue a CNAS software test report as required for software acceptance, project delivery, system launch, operating environment adaptation, version upgrade verification and related quality evaluation scenarios, providing clients with objective, standardised and credible evidence of software compatibility evaluation.