What sort of testing is appropriate when your server people want to apply updates to .NET Framework?

My company's server people are looking to apply some updates to the .NET Framework (in this case I think it's .NET 4 SP1) on the company's servers and desktops.

The test strategy they want to implement is to install it into a test environment and step through the applications' UIs. The applications are a combination of SharePoint, Dynamics CRM and some other business critical third party .NET applications.

I'm particularly dubious about the validity of this test strategy as I think that without considerable effort, very little of the cod开发者_如何学运维e will actually be exercised. Secondly, without any external data validation, how can they be sure of anything?

So, what I'm looking for is some advice and supporting evidence regarding what sort of testing is valid and worthwhile when pushing out updates of this sort.

.NET 4 Service Pack 1 shouldn't have a huge impact on your application. You can go through release notes to check if any side-effects are related to your application.

The usual release testing should be enough, I guess.

A full regression will give you more confidence, but you might not have enough resources.

A good unit tests coverage will help, but again if you don't have it than there's little you can do.