White Box and Black Box testing
Article by jitkasem
There are no commercial software released to the market without testing.Testing is an important process in software development.The big orwell-known software company place importance on software testing equal tosoftware implementation.There are a lot of software testing methodology used by the software tester. Black box and White box testing are the software testing methodology that widely used nowadays.
White Box testingAnother name of White box testing is Glass-Box testing or Structural Testing.It is the test in the system.The tester have to specify the test case that will be usedfor test the system.They must have an ability in programming and well understand insoftware testing theory.Their task it to assign the test case to every line, everystatement or every path of the program being tested. You can compare white boxtesting with the measurement of electronics circuit (In measurement of electronicscircuit,you have to measure the electric current and voltage in every node existingin your circuit).
White box testing can be applied for testing in Unit testing,Integration testingor System testing but in commonly the tester apply White box testing in Unit testing phaseof software development.
The advantage of White box testing.1.The process of White box testing can increase te quality of source code and can makethe pieces of source code work more efficiency because it is the testing in the system(In the function and in every branches of the code)
2.In White box testing we can look for an error by give an input to the system and monitorthe output from the system.Otherwise it also can look for the internal error that existingin the mentioned system too.
The disadvantage of White box testing.1.This kind of testing require high skill in software coding to assure the high-quality ofsource code.
Black Box testing.Another name of Black-Box testing is Functional Testing.It is the testingthat disregard internal mechanism of the system (don't test the internal componentof the system such as source code or function).This testing method is focus on theoutput that come out from the system after we sent the input to it (Output thatcome out after the system responded to the input data).
In Black-Box Testing, the tester will not look for the code to test, so the codeis considered to be "Black Box" that we can't see the content inside the box.Thetester know only they must send the input to the "Black Box" and then it will releasethe output to the tester.
The tester usually use the requirement specification document (RequirementKnowledge) to build the test case, so they know what is the outcome that the systemwill send after they send the corresponding input to it.
Now I can summarize the black box testing as follow...- It is the testing that disregard the source code or commandin the program.- It is testing of function of system base on the requirement documents.- The tester must assume for output that will come out from the systemafter sending the various input pattern to the system (The output must match up withthe input).
Now I can summarize White Box Testing as follow...-It is the testing that examine the structure or the work-flow of the program.-The tester must build the specific test case used for testing in each specific condition.-The test case must contain the case that can be executed normally and abnormally.-Try to execute every statement in the function at least 1 time.
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