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System testing is testing conducted on a complete, integrated system to evaluate the system's compliance with its specified requirements. System testing falls within the scope of Black box testing, and as such, should require no knowledge of the inner design of the code or logic.
As a rule, System testing takes, as its input, all of the "integrated" software components that have successfully passed Integration testing and also the software system itself integrated with any applicable hardware system(s). The purpose of Integration testing is to detect any inconsistencies between the software units that are integrated together called assemblages or between any of the assemblages and hardware. System testing is more of a limiting type of testing, where it seeks to detect both defects within the "inter-assemblages" and also the system as a whole.
Generally speaking, System testing is the first time that the entire system can be tested as a whole system against the Feature Requirement Specification(s) (FRS) and/or the System Requirement Specification (SRS), these are the rules that describe the functionality that the vendor (the entity developing the software) and a customer have agreed upon. System testing tends to be more of an investigatory testing phase, where the focus is to have almost a destructive attitude and test not only the design, but also the behavior and even the believed expectations of the customer. System testing is intended to test up to and beyond the bounds defined in the software/hardware requirements specification(s).
The following examples are different types of testing, within System testing, that should be considered before System testing begins:
1. Functional testing
2. Structural testing
3. User interface testing
4. Error exit testing
5. User help testing
6. Security Testing
7. Capacity testing
8. Performance testing
9. Sanity testing
10. Regression testing
11. Reliability testing
12. Recovery testing
13. Installation testing
14. Maintenance testing
15. Documentation testing
Although different testing organizations may prescribe more or less types of testing, within System testing, this list serves as a general framework, or foundation to begin with.
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