Functional Testing - Software Testing: Testing Across the Entire Software Development Life Cycle - page 120

All functional testing uses business requirements and the associated software
design specifi cations as the validation yardstick. If the business requirement says the
software should do “ x ,” then functional testing validates “ x ” as the expected result.
The functional testing objectives typically include

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

user navigation testing
transaction screen testing
transaction fl ow testing
report screen testing
report fl ow testing
database create/retrieve/update/delete testing

The term “regression testing” means to regress or go back to a less mature or
less stable state. Applied to software, regression testing means to search for software
corrections that make the current version less stable by unintentionally affecting
code not directly related to the corrections. Regression testing is normally started
while new code is being written and existing code is being corrected. The addition
of new code or corrections to existing code always raises the possibility that the
new or changed code may accidentally “break” the already tested code. The testing
response to this possibility is to rerun all successful test actions and scripts to date
on a new build of the software.
The objective of white box testing is to verify the correctness of the software's
statements, code paths, conditions, loops, and data fl ow. This objective is often re-
ferred to as logic coverage. The prerequisites for white box testing include the soft-
ware requirements, use cases, the executable program, its data, and its source code .
Six generic white box testing techniques are as follows:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

statement coverage technique
branch (single condition) coverage technique
compound condition coverage technique
path coverage technique
loop coverage technique
intuition and experience

The objective of black box testing is to verify the correctness of the software's
behavior that directly supports daily business activity. This objective is often referred
to as behavior coverage. The requirements for black box testing are the software
requirements, use cases, only the executable program, and its data. These require-
ments are usually met during the middle phases of the development life cycle when
large pieces of code begin to operate together or when software is purchased from a
vendor. Four generic black box testing techniques are

1.
2.

equivalence classes technique
boundary value analysis technique