What is Integration Test and Advantages of Integration Test for software project?

In this post, I will explain What is Integration Test and Advantages of Integration Test for a software project?  Integration Testing is the phase in software testing in which individual software modules are combined and tested as a group. It occurs after unit testing and before validation testing. Integration testing is also known as "integration and testing(I & T)". Integration Testing is black-box testing.

A typical software project consists of multiple software components, coded by different programmers. The purpose of integration testing is to ensure distinct components of the application still work in accordance with customer requirements.

Test cases are developed with the express purpose of exercising the interfaces between the components. This activity is carried out by the test team.

1. Integration testing tests the interfaces between components and the interactions between different parts of the system.

2. The components of the product are tested as a single group or organized in an iterative manner.

3. After integrating two different components together, specific integration test team carry out the integration testing.

Integration testing is considered complete when actual results and expected results are either in line or differences are explainable/acceptable based on client input. 

Most of the testing primarily rely on end to end testing. It's important and must to have an end to end testing. But at the same time, it’s important to have the Integration Test in software testing.

Advantage of the Integration Testing:

1. Integration testing starts at the very early stages of development and bugs are caught earlier rather than the later stage.

2. Confidence in the development cycle is high.

3. Easy to integrate with daily builds and easy to test in a development environment

4. Tests run faster compared to end tests.

5. Integration tests catch system-level issues, such as a broken database schema, mistaken cache integration.

6. Code Coverage is higher and easy to track.

7. Integration Tests are more reliable and easy to isolate the failures.