Melvin Dong's Weblog

Sanity Test, Smoke test & monkey test.
Smoke tests get their name from the electronics industry. The circuits are laid out on a bread board and power is applied. If anything starts smoking, there is a problem. In the software industry, smoke testing is a shallow and wide approach to the application. You test all areas of the application without getting too deep. This is also known as a Build Verification test or BVT.
In comparison, sanity testing is usually narrow and deep. That is they look at only a few areas but all aspects of that part of the application. A smoke test is scripted--either using a written set of tests or an automated test--whereas a sanity test is usually unscripted.
A monkey test is also unscripted, but this sort of test is like a room full of monkeys with a typewriter (or computer) placed in front of each of them. The theory is that, given enough time, you could get the works of Shakespeare (or some other document) out of them. This is based on the idea that random activity can create order or cover all options.