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Unlike physical systems, most of the defects in software are design errors. Read about the important purpose of software testing and differentiate between verification and validation and basic software testing terms. Compare and contrast the use of various testing strategies, including black-box, white-box, top-down, and bottom-up.
Test-related measures
Evaluation of the program under test (IEEE982.1-98)
Program measurements to aid in planning and designing testing (IEE982.1-88)
Measures based on program size (for example, source lines of code or function points) or on program structure (like complexity) are used to guide testing. Structural measures can also include measurements among program modules in terms of the frequency with which modules call each other.
Fault types, classification, and statistics (EEE1044-93)
The testing literature is rich in classifications and taxonomies of faults. To make testing more effective, it is important to know which types of faults could be found in the software under test, and the relative frequency with which these faults have occurred in the past. This information can be very useful in making quality predictions, as well as for process improvement.
Fault density (IEEE982.1-88)
A program under test can be assessed by counting and classifying the discovered faults by their types. For each fault class, fault density is measured as the ratio between the number of faults found and the size of the program
Life test, reliability evaluation
A statistical estimate of software reliability, which can be obtained by reliability achievement and evaluation, n be used to evaluate a product and decide whether or not testing can be stopped.
Reliability growth models
Reliability growth models provide a prediction of reliability based on the failures observed under reliability achievement and evaluation They assume, in general, that the faults that caused the observed failures have been fixed (although some models also accept imperfect fixes), and thus, on average, the product’s reliability exhibits an increasing trend. There now exist dozens of published models. Many are laid down on some common assumptions, while others differ. Notably, these models are divided into failure-count and time-between-failure models.