Black Box Testing for the Software Test Specification

Question

I am working on the Black Box case as part of a Software Test Document and I am not quite sure how to do it. My professor states that we dont need to provide actual results. I am just confused as to what and how I am suppose to do this. Is there any good examples out there that I can reference. I looked at the IEEE 829 but thats not really helpful.

Answer 1

Perhaps your professor is asking you to apply Black Box Design techniques to design test cases to test certain functionality or requirements. Some examples:

1. equivalence partitioning
2. state transition
3. boundary value analysis
4. pairwise testing

Answer 2

Definition:

• Black box testing is a Testing, either functional or non-functional, without reference to the internal structure of the component or system. So in this method internal structure of program is not considered, tester should provide input set to the program and test whether the program is giving expected output or not.

• This method is called as black box because, tester is not aware of the software program. Software program is like a black box; inside which tester cannot see.

BLACK BOX TESTING TECHNIQUES

Following are some techniques that can be used for designing black box tests:

Equivalence partitioning Equivalence Partitioning is a software test design technique that involves dividing input values into valid and invalid partitions and selecting representative values from each partition as test data.

Boundary Value Analysis Boundary Value Analysis is a software test design technique that involves determination of boundaries for input values and selecting values that are at the boundaries and just inside/outside of the boundaries as test data.

Graph Based Testing Methods Each and every application is build up of some objects. All such objects are identified and graph is prepared. From this object graph each object relationship is identified and test cases written accordingly to discover the errors.

Error Guessing This is purely based on previous experience and judgment of tester. Error Guessing is the art of guessing where errors can be hidden. For this technique there are no specific tools, writing the test cases that cover all the application paths.

Example of Black Box Testing

A tester, without knowledge of the internal structures of a website, tests the web pages by using a browser and providing inputs (i.e. clicks, keystrokes) and verifying whether the output produced is the expected output.

Answer 3

Black box testing is a software testing method where in testers are not required to know coding or internal structure of the software. Black box testing method relies on testing software with various inputs and validating results against expected output. You can write the Software Test Document using various Black box techniques like Equivalence partitioning, State transition, Boundary value analysis etc. based upon your Application scope.