white box testing strategies vs. code inspections and walkthroughs

[Brian Scherer]

rodmoten@netscape.net (Prof. Mo) wrote in message news:<b9fdd764.0307020919.5ccf8e10@posting.google.com>... Hi, I'm new to software testing research. It seems to me that it would be pointless to perform white box coverage methods if code inspections and walkthroughs are done. Is this an ideology held by many people in practice? Rod

It also depends on the industry etc.

In the medical device industry, you better do both (code walk through
and white box testing) for the critical units of code. If you don't
and a patient/end user dies, you could leave yourself (company) open
for a lawsuit.

In the defense industry, mission critical, it is required.

If you need more info, look to the military complex. They have spent
millions of dollars into research on how to develop software, and make
it more dependable, reliable, safer, and more maintainable.

Slowly their research results are coming into the commercial world.

Try the software engineering intitute (SEI) for more info.

Hope this helps,

Brian Scherer

[Wayne Woodruff]

They are not mutually exclusive. A good process should use both.

For example, in the embedded world, there are pieces of code that are
very difficult to execute because they are used to trap hardware
failures. Replicating the hardware failure can be difficult or
prohibitively expensive. In those cases, an inspection would be
invaluable.

Likewise, a code inspection can miss thing uncovered by testing such
as runtime errors, thread synchronization, etc

Wayne
rodmoten@netscape.net (Prof. Mo) wrote in message news:<b9fdd764.0307020919.5ccf8e10@posting.google.com>... Hi, I'm new to software testing research. It seems to me that it would be pointless to perform white box coverage methods if code inspections and walkthroughs are done. Is this an ideology held by many people in practice? Rod

[Blue Jean]

For any sound software development project,
you MUST use both. Code inspection, unit testing etc
can save lots of QA's time, but overall functinality and whitebox
testing is obviously necessary to ensure the software works
as is designed and specified.
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Wayne Woodruff <wayne@jtan.com> wrote in message news:<6510hv8d2koic4q0654en02nsklcnvv91p@4ax.com>... They are not mutually exclusive. A good process should use both. For example, in the embedded world, there are pieces of code that are very difficult to execute because they are used to trap hardware failures. Replicating the hardware failure can be difficult or prohibitively expensive. In those cases, an inspection would be invaluable. Likewise, a code inspection can miss thing uncovered by testing such as runtime errors, thread synchronization, etc Waynerodmoten@netscape.net (Prof. Mo) wrote in message news:<b9fdd764.0307020919.5ccf8e10@posting.google.com>... Hi, I'm new to software testing research. It seems to me that it would be pointless to perform white box coverage methods if code inspections and walkthroughs are done. Is this an ideology held by many people in practice? Rod