Valtesten

Valtesten is a term used in software quality assurance to describe a family of tests that validate the correctness, completeness, and format of input values within a system. The goal is to ensure data conforms to predefined constraints such as type, range, pattern, and business rules, thereby preventing invalid data from propagating through applications or databases.

Origin and usage: The word is a composite drawing on the concept of value and the Germanic-derived testen. It is encountered in QA literature and practice, particularly in Scandinavian contexts, where teams describe value validation activities as valutest or valtesten. The concept overlaps with broader data validation and input validation practices.

Scope: Valtesten covers a range of checks including boundary value analysis, equivalence partitioning, type and format validation, cross-field validation, and negative testing to confirm proper error handling. It is applicable to user interfaces, APIs, data pipelines, and database schemas.

Process: Typical workflows start with defining constraints for each input, designing test cases, implementing automated tests, executing tests, and logging defects. Continuous integration pipelines often include valtesten as part of data validation or form validation test suites.

Examples: Validating a birthdate field to be a date in the past, an age between 0 and 120, an email that matches a standard pattern, or a postal code that conforms to a country-specific format.

See also: data validation, input validation, boundary value analysis, test automation.