As per my opinion is Abu is right.
Release Acceptance Testing is Smoke/Sanity/Build verification Test. However, Acceptance Testing is User acceptance Testing.
Yes , Both of you are right .
Release Acceptance testing is related to Sanity / Smoke / Build verification testing , and
Acceptance Testing is related to Clients acceptance / Beta testing .
I would like to share my view on this topic as it gives different meanings:
Release Acceptance Test must be related to a specific release (i.e. which has come up with certain short term commitments or partially developed features) and the test could be done by internal testing team or some times by client. Whereas we aware that acceptance test is done by client only as per business commitment from vendor.
Usually release acceptance test can be seen in R&D related projects as client is not sure about the behaviour of the system after implementation of specific requirements, especially look & feel (GUI) + use and feel (peformance).
However, we may also say release acceptance test is done internally using random test with scientific approach by expert but to ensure overall quality we shall check and analyse test reports and open issues if any before taking the decision for making a release.
that I agree..my intention was what measures do u follow to track where the issue was done...say when Test team gives Green Signal to Release Build then it means that all the Features according to Customer were checked and once its released Customer has rejected in User Acceptance test...so it conveys that there is a GAP between the Environment of ours and Customer...Environment does not mean the H/w,S/w...it covers the docs and what all needed