Smoke & Sanity testing

SMOKE TESTING

Smoke testing is a kind of Software Testing performed after software build to ascertain that the critical functionalities of the program is working fine. It is executed "before" any detailed functional or regression tests are executed on the software build. The purpose is to reject a badly broken application, so that the QA team does not waste time installing and testing the software application.

SANITY TESTING

Sanity testing is a kind of Software Testing performed after receiving a software build, with minor changes in code, or functionality, to ascertain that the bugs have been fixed and no further issues are introduced due to these changes. The goal is to determine that the proposed functionality works roughly as expected. If sanity test fails, the build is rejected to save the time and costs involved in a more rigorous testing.

SMOKE VS SANITY TESTING

Smoke Testing	Sanity Testing
Smoke Testing is performed to ascertain that the critical functionalities of the program is working fine	Sanity Testing is done to check the new functionality / bugs have been fixed
The objective of this testing is to verify the "stability" of the system in order to proceed with more rigorous testing	The objective of the testing is to verify the "rationality" of the system in order to proceed with more rigorous testing
This testing is performed by the developers or testers	Sanity testing is usually performed by testers
Smoke testing is usually documented or scripted	Sanity testing is usually not documented and is unscripted
Smoke testing is a subset of Acceptance testing	Sanity testing is a subset of Regression testing
Smoke testing exercises the entire system from end to end	Sanity testing exercises only the particular component of the entire system
Smoke testing is like General Health Check Up	Sanity Testing is like specialized health check up