INF 115 Final Review Exam Questions & Answers

When do quality activities happen in software development? - Answer Testing moves earlier and earlier with each process change. ex: waterfall - testing wasn't done until end v model - looked at waterfall and did testing at various stages How has our view of this changed over time? - Answer QA has slowly become recognized as something necessary early in the design process Difference between validation and verification - Answer validation: check software w/ users to ensure user satisfaction verification: check test cases w/ software behavior to ensure consistency difference between mistake, fault, error, failure - Answer mistake: a human action that produces an incorrect result fault: (AKA bug) an anomaly in the source code that MAY lead to an error error: the runtime effect of executing a fault, which causes a deviation from correct behavior and MAY result in a failure failure: the externally observable manifestation of an error mistake-fault-error-failure test case - Answer a defined set of input values that cause a program to take some defined action w/ an expected output test suite - Answer a collection of test cases test plan - Answer specification document oracle - Answer a mechanism for determining whether the actual behavior of a test case execution matches the expected behavior black box testing - Answer AKA functional testing - derive sets of inputs that will fully exercise all of the functional requirements of a system - black box tests are designed to answer "How is the function's validity tested?" white box testing - Answer AKA structural testing - carried out w/ respect to some well-defined coverage criterion - provides measurement of testing activity - influences test strategy Why not exhaustively test or fully prove for correctness? - Answer Limitations of Testing: testing can prove only the presence of bugs, not their absence What is the basic point of testing to find bugs? Why do we then test at all? - Answer - Software can never be assumed to be correct - Any software must be verified - important to control the quality of the product What is exploratory testing? What are its strengths? What are its limitations? Who would want to do it? When? How? - Answer - the type of testing that we all inherently do - use human intelligence to guide testing; allows the tester to observe and evaluate unspecified behaviors; encourages the tester to take notes to guide future testing - unscripted, unautomated, unrepeatable - tester characteristics: creative, careful observation, critical thinking, diverse ideas What is acceptance testing? What forms can it take? - Answer - assessment of whether agreed-upon reqs are met - checking the business contract btwn client and contractor - forms: smoke testing, user acceptance testing, end-user testing What is smoke testing? - Answer - exercise most major functionality, ensure that everything still looks OK - often performed BEFORE even starting the main testing process - answers: Does the program compile? Does it run? - can be system tests or units tests - "most cost effective method for identifying and fixing defects in software" -Microsoft What is alpha testing and beta testing? - Answer alpha testing - beta testing - alpha: show software to ppl w/in the company - beta: show software to ppl outside the company - another form of acceptance testing - refer to different levels of maturity of early non-developer actual use of early versions of the software What is behavior driven development (BDD) and how does it relate to acceptance testing? - Answer - write test cases that follow the action model (given, when, then) - more verification-focused form of acceptance testing -- to automate user validation - focus on the behavior of the program rather than the tester - imposes a structure to test specifications - more higher level than TDD Random testing vs Systematic - Answer random (uniform): - pick possible inputs uniformly - treats all inputs as equally valuable systematic (non-uniform): - select inputs that are esp. valuable - usually by choosing reps of classes that are apt to fail often or not at all