Software Testing Methods

The report describes the various software testing methods and specifies mainly on the black box and white box techniques and also the working procedures of the both techniques are described. The various working procedures of the functional and structural techniques are also described in the below report.

Running head: SOFTWARE TESTING METHODS
BLACK BOX AND WHITE BOX TESTING METHODS
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SOFTWARE TESTING METHODS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The report describes the various software testing methods and specifies mainly on the black box
and white box techniques and also the working procedures of the both techniques are described.
The various working procedures of the functional and structural techniques are also described in
the below report.
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SOFTWARE TESTING METHODS
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................3
Background of the research paper and method used...................................................................3
Black box and white box testing..................................................................................................3
Equivalence class partitioning – advantages and limitations......................................................4
Boundary value analysis..............................................................................................................4
Structural testing..........................................................................................................................4
Testing spectrum:.........................................................................................................................5
Functional and structural testing technique:................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7
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SOFTWARE TESTING METHODS
Introduction
The research paper is based on the software testing which is used in each and every
software that is developed to check the quality and technique used to develop it. The software
testing is also related with the process of finding the faults in a developed software so that it can
be used without any complications. The testing phase is also regarded as a significant part of the
SDLC and this validation and verification of the softwares thus developed is done by the white
box and black box testing methods (Mathur 2013). The research paper is based on the testing by
blackbox techniques and testing by whitebox technique and it also states the advantages of using
the various testing techniques. The testing by black box method is used generally for the
validation purpose of the softwares and the testing by white box method is used for the
verification of those softwares.
Discussion
Background of the research paper and method used
The research paper is based on the techniques of testing of software and how they are
beneficial and also the techniques elaborated in the paper are the whitebox and blackbox
techniques and the usefulness of such techniques. The methods used in this paper are the
quantitative method and several journals and papers were identified and gathered which stated
the testing techniques of white box and black box methods in the software testing phase.
Black box and white box testing
The testing by blackbox method is referred as the testing technique without the
information of the internal workings of the application and the person testing the software is
unaware of the system architecture of the software and also does not have the knowledge about
the source code. The blackbox testing is done by testing the user interface of the software and
also giving the necessary inputs and examining the desired outputs of any software without the
knowledge of how the internal procedures are working to process the given outputs (Lewis
2017). It is mainly applied for the large scale code sections and where the code sections are not
available for the testers. However, there are certain limitations of the process using the method of
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black box, as the tester has only limited amount of access and also has minimal knowledge about
the application.
The whitebox testing method is used for the testing the logics and portions of the source
code and it is also often referred as glass testing. The white box tester needs to know about the
source code and the internal working procedure of the code to successfully test the software. The
faults in the internal source code of the softwares are generally identified by the white box
testing technique and it helps in the optimization of the code (Bhasin and Khanna 2014).
However, this verification of the softwares are cost effective and also takes significant amount of
time to test the each and every portion of the code.
Equivalence class partitioning – advantages and limitations
The equivalence class portioning can be defined as the assumptions that are made in
terms of the inputs and outputs that are given in infinite sets while the testing phase of the
softwares. The classes of the data are made by the analyzing and examining the input data. The
test cases are made upon these equivalent classes and it gives the tester, an opportunity to test
huge portions of the code sections and also the defects in the code section are identified easily
(Huang and Peleska 2016). However, the limitations of the equivalence class portioning involves
the assumptions that are made in the equivalence classes and it is also not only the stand-alone
method and has certain supplementary supports.
Boundary value analysis
The term boundary value analysis mentioned in the paper is a design technique of the
blackbox testing based on the various test cases. It is used to identify any bugs that might be
present in the inputs and also helps in the testing the values of boundary between in valid and
valid inputs. This technique helps in saving the time and also in reducing the testing procedure
which in term improves the quality of the softwares. However, the method has certain limitations
such as it cannot be applied for logical and Boolean variables (Henard et al. 2016). The boundary
value analysis is also not applicable for the strongly-typed and complex languages.
Structural testing
The structural testing is associated with the structural code and internal logic testing
known as white box testing and it mainly deals with the detection of the logical errors in the code
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SOFTWARE TESTING METHODS
sections. The testing by white box method is done in all the levels of system development and
also it also determines the requirement analysis and designing. There are two sub parts of testing
by white box method –testing by static white box method and testing by structural white box.
The static white box testing are used for formal inspection, walkthrough of the codes and desk
checking while the structural white box testing is associated with the path testing, data flow
testing and loop testing.
Static white box testing: The process includes the testing of the software by overviewing the
inputs and outputs of the software and also to check the efficiency of the softwares. The main
function of the whitebox testing is to check whether the functional requirements of the software
are met or not. The walkthrough of codes is referred as a technical code walkthrough by the high
level technical personal within a company and determines the logical errors in the sections of the
code and also the error codes are corrected immediately.
Structural white box testing: The testing procedure deals with the code and its structures and
also the operational procedure of the codes. The techniques used for structural testing by white
box method are loop testing, basis path testing and coverage testing. The loop testing is the
testing of the loops and validating its operational structures and procedures. The process of loop
testing is associated with the fixing of infinite loop problems and also identifying the loop
initialization problems (Ahmed 2016). The advantages of using the loop testing is that it limits
the number of loop iterations and also ensures that the process does not go into infinite loop. It
also helps in the determination of the capacity of the program. The path testing and the coverage
testing is also a part of the structural whitebox testing which helps in the validation process of
the softwares that are being tested.
Testing spectrum:
The SDLC includes the testing of the softwares and it is conducted at the each stage of
the of the software development. The testing of the softwares have certain parts and sub parts
which can be described as follows –
 The unit testing is done to test the each and every single unit of the code and also it is
generally dine by the developers of the software and are done with small units of the
entire code (Jan et al. 2016).
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 The integration testing of the softwares helps in assuring that whether the different
units of the code section works together without any problem.
 The system testing method is the method of testing the entire system of the software
and also performs according to the requirement specification.
 Acceptance testing is done by the business owners of the company to check whether
the business requirements of the software are met by the developed software.
 The regression testing is done to check the reliability of the softwares and also to
check that there is no new errors in the developed software.
 The alpha and beta testing in the testing spectrum defines the developments and
updates that are done by the developer’s end and the customer’s end respectively.
 The functional testing is done at the last stage of the testing procedures and it verifies
whether all the requirements of the software are met or not.
Functional and structural testing technique:
The functional testing is referred as the testing by black box method and it is based on the
design or requirement specification of the softwares and the functional testing of the softwares is
related to the external behaviour of the softwares (Nidhra 2012). The structural testing on the
other hand is known as the whitebox testing which deals with the specific code sections and
internal logic of the softwares that are developed.
Conclusion
The research paper states the techniques and tools for the testing of the softwares and
specifies the blackbox testing and whitebox methods. The testing by whitebox and blackbox
methods are widely described and the structural and functional testing are also described. The
various parts of testing by blackbox and whitebox methods and their working procedure in the
software testing phase is described and elaborated. Thus from the above research paper we can
conclude that the two tools, whitebox testing and blackbox testing methods are very much
essential in the testing procedure of the softwares and the developers use this two techniques
according to needs of their testing the significant parts of the software.
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References
Abrahamsson, P., Salo, O., Ronkainen, J. and Warsta, J., 2017. Agile software development
methods: Review and analysis. arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.08439.
Ahmed, B.S., 2016. Test case minimization approach using fault detection and combinatorial
optimization techniques for configuration-aware structural testing. Engineering Science and
Technology, an International Journal, 19(2), pp.737-753.
Bardin, S., Chebaro, O., Delahaye, M. and Kosmatov, N., 2014, July. An all-in-one toolkit for
automated white-box testing. In International Conference on Tests and Proofs (pp. 53-60).
Springer, Cham.
Bhasin, H. and Khanna, E., 2014. Black box testing based on requirement analysis and design
specifications. International Journal of Computer Applications, 87(18).
Henard, C., Papadakis, M., Harman, M., Jia, Y. and Le Traon, Y., 2016, May. Comparing white-
box and black-box test prioritization. In 2016 IEEE/ACM 38th International Conference on
Software Engineering (ICSE) (pp. 523-534). IEEE.
Huang, W.L. and Peleska, J., 2016. Complete model-based equivalence class testing.
International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer, 18(3), pp.265-283.
Jan, S.R., Shah, S.T.U., Johar, Z.U., Shah, Y. and Khan, F., 2016. An innovative approach to
investigate various software testing techniques and strategies. International Journal of Scientific
Research in Science, Engineering and Technology (IJSRSET), Print ISSN, pp.2395-1990.
Jorgensen, P.C., 2013. Software testing: a craftsman's approach. Auerbach Publications.
Lee, N., Jung, J.J., Selamat, A. and Hwang, D., 2014. Black-box testing of practical movie
recommendation systems: A comparative study. Comput. Sci. Inf. Syst., 11(1), pp.241-249.
Lewis, W.E., 2017. Software testing and continuous quality improvement. Auerbach
publications.
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Mathur, A.P., 2013. Foundations of software testing, 2/e. Pearson Education India.
Nidhra, S., 2012. BLACK BOX AND WHITE BOX TESTING TECHNIQUES –A LITERATURE
REVIEW. 1st ed. Research gate.
Peled, D.A., 2013. Software reliability methods. Springer Science & Business Media.
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