Sanity testing and Smoke testing. What is the difference?
For last 10 years I have answered this question justifying the answer which I read in book. This is also one of my question in interviews. It is such a question which do not have answer.
It is a question that should not be answered except perhaps by questioning the question: Why does it matter to you? Who is asking you? Have you looked it up on Google?
But if you still ask for it here is the answer
Both smoke testing and sanity testing refer to a first-pass, shallow form of testing intended to establish whether a product or system can perform the most basic functions. Both have one objective of accepting or rejecting the build available for testing. Some people call such testing “smoke testing”; others call it “sanity testing”.
“Smoke testing” derives from the hardware world; if you create an electronic circuit, power it up, and smoke comes out somewhere, the smoke test has failed.
“Sanity testing”– The product behave in some crazy fashion means sanity test failed.
Go through the blog below by Michael Bolton for more detail analysis.
http://www.developsense.com/blog/2011/11/smoke-testing-vs-sanity-testing/