Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The fi nal step is to add a column on the right side of the combinations table for
actual test results. The resulting table is called an expected value coverage matrix.
The partial matrix for this example is given below.
Expected results matrix—maximum room rate (partial table)
Input
Input
Expected results
Actual results
Maximum
room rate
Age
Co-pay
Maximum room rate
0- 6 years
1
0
1
3
5
6
7
3
3
6-17 years
5
6
7
$50.00
$50.00
$50.00
$50.00
$50.00
$50.00
$50.00
$50.00
$49.99
$50.01
$75.00
$75.00
$75.00
$75.00
$50.00
error—age not in range
$50.00
$50.00
$50.00
$50.00
$50.00
error—co-pay not valid for age
error—co-pay not valid for age
error—co-pay not valid for age
$100.00
error—co-pay not valid for age
$100.00
$100.00
The actual test results are posted in the matrix as the black box test execution is
performed. Differences between expected results and actual results for any combina-
tion of inputs should cause further analysis to determine if the difference is (a) faulty
test design, (b) unclear ambiguous business rules, or (c) program error.
7.6.4 Intuition and Experience
This section is devoted to those software aspects that testers have found by repeated ex-
perience to be troublesome areas in an application under development that the more for-
mal behavioral testing tends to miss. Here is a summary of these troublesome aspects.
7.6.4.1 Error Handling
Error handling is by far the most complex and most onerous programming to
develop. By its very nature, error handling is supposed to expect the unexpected
and gracefully recover to the pre-error operation state. It is not surprising that er-
ror handling represents the greatest risk of behavior failure.Error handling chal-
lenges the programmer fi rst to detect that an error in data or processing has occurred.
Then, error handling challenges the programmer to correctly alert the end user to
the situation. Finally, error handling challenges the programmer to correctly recover
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