Software Testing

Foundations of Software Testing
Chapter 1: Preliminaries
Aditya P. Mathur
Purdue University

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Last update: September 3, 2007

Learning Objectives
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Errors, Testing, debugging, test process, CFG, correctness, reliability, oracles. Finite state machines

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Testing techniques

© Aditya P. Mathur 2005

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Errors, faults, failures

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Errors
Errors are a part of our daily life. Humans make errors in their thoughts, actions, and in the products that might result from their actions. Errors occur wherever humans are involved in taking actions and making decisions.
These fundamental facts of human existence make testing an essential activity.

© Aditya P. Mathur 2005

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Errors: Examples

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Error, faults, failures

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Software Quality

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Software quality
Static quality attributes: structured, maintainable, testable code as well as the availability of correct and complete documentation. Dynamic quality attributes: software reliability, correctness, completeness, consistency, usability, and performance

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Software quality (contd.)
Completeness refers to the availability of all features listed in the requirements, or in the user manual. An incomplete software is one that does not fully implement all features required. Consistency refers to adherence to a common set of conventions and assumptions. For example, all buttons in the user interface might follow a common color coding convention. An example of inconsistency would be when a database application displays the date of birth of a person in the database in different formats.
© Aditya P. Mathur 2005

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Software quality (contd.)
Usability refers to the ease with which an application... [continues]

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