Difference between Smoke test and sanity tests

Smoke Testing

Initially, smoke testing originated during the testing of hardware for the first time and it was considered a success in case of no smoke and fire coming out. Hence the name smoke testing. It is basically done to check if a build received can be accepted to perform testing any further or not. You can consider this a shallow approach that in smoke testing, most critical areas of the application are testing without getting into too much details.In order words, it is done to check the build stability. Then only it is accepted for further testing. Otherwise the build is marked as fail and QA team doesnt perform any tests on the build. Smoke testing is also called build verification testing.

Some essential points about smoke testing:-

# A smoke test is a subset of all test cases that are a part of overall test plan.
# Smoke tests are good for verifying proper deployment or other non invasive changes.
# Smoke tests can never replace actual functional testing.
# A smoke test is usually coded, either using a written set of tests or an automated test as it is performed on each and every build.
# You can consider smoke tests as a normal health check up of a build before taking it to testing in depth.

Sanity testing:

After accepting the smoketest or certifying the build, a subset of regression test cases are executed that to check no other defect has been introduced in the new build. Sometimes, when multiple cycles of regression testing are executed, sanity testing of the software can be done at later cycles after through regression test cycles. If we are moving a build from staging / testing server to production server, sanity testing of the software application can be done to check that whether the build is sane enough to move to further at production server or not.

Some essential points about sanity testing are:-

# A sanity test is a narrow regression test that focuses on one or a few areas of functionality. Sanity testing is usually narrow and deep.
# A sanity test cases are not automated usually
# A Sanity test is used to determine a small section of the application is still working after a minor change.
# Sanity testing is a cursory testing, it is performed whenever a cursory testing is sufficient to prove the application is functioning according to specifications. This level of testing is a subset of regression testing.
# Sanity testing is to verify whether requirements are met or not, checking all features breadth-first.