6. Testing

Software testing:

Software testing is the process of checking software, to verify that it satisfies its requirements and to detect errors.

Software testing is an empirical investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service under test, with respect to the context in which it is intended to operate. This includes, but is not limited to, the process of executing a program or application with the intent of finding software bugs.
Testing can never completely establish the correctness of computer software. Instead, it furnishes a criticism or comparison that compares the state and behaviour of the product against a specification. A primary purpose for testing is to detect software failures so that defects may be uncovered and corrected.

Testing methods

Software testing methods are traditionally divided into black box testing and white box testing. These two approaches are used to describe the point of view that a test engineer takes when designing test cases.

Black box testing

Black box testing treats the software as a black-box without any understanding of internal behavior. It aims to test the functionality according to the requirements. Thus, the tester inputs data and only sees the output from the test object. This level of testing usually requires thorough test cases to be provided to the tester who then can simply verify that for a given input, the output value (or behavior), is the same as the expected value specified in the test case. Black box testing methods include: equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, all-pairs testing, fuzz testing, model-based testing, traceability matrix etc.

White box testing

White box testing, however, is when the tester has access to the internal data structures and algorithms.