Software Development
Integration Testing
Definition
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.
Why It Matters
While unit tests ensure individual components work correctly, integration tests ensure that they work correctly together. They are crucial for finding bugs in the interactions between different parts of a system.
Contextual Example
An e-commerce application might have a user service and an order service. An integration test would verify that when a user is created in the user service, a corresponding "create order" request to the order service for that user succeeds.
Common Misunderstandings
- Integration tests are typically slower and more complex to write than unit tests, as they may require external systems like a database or another API to be running.
- They sit in the middle of the testing pyramid, above unit tests and below end-to-end tests.