The Different Approaches to Software Testing: Advantages and Disadvantages of White Box, Black Box, and Grey Box Testing

The Different Approaches to Software Testing: Advantages and Disadvantages of White Box, Black Box, and Grey Box Testing

The 3 different approaches to Software Testing are:

• White Box Testing
• Black Box Testing
• Grey Box Testing

White Box Testing 

White box testing has been given a lot of names, some call it glass box testing, open box testing, clear box testing, and a few also call it structural testing. In this type of testing, you already have an understanding and in depth knowledge of the code and design of the software. The motive behind this type of testing is to inspect how the software functions in relation to the written code. White box testing allows the user to inspect or examine the inner functioning of the system, so long as they possess the programming knowledge that is required in order to execute it.

Some Benefits of White Box Testing are:

• It helps in identifying unseen faults or defects.
• It is possible to execute this type of testing at the initial stages.
• It provides the opportunity to fine tune or optimize code.
• It is more detailed.
• As there is an understanding of how the code works, it provides highest coverage

Few Drawbacks of White Box Testing are:

• Without proper knowledge, it could get complex.
• There is a requirement for extremely skilled resources.
• Tools that you need to carry out white-box testing might not be freely accessible or obtainable.

Black Box Testing 

Black box testing is also referred to as Behavioural Testing amongst its user base. When performing this type of testing, the user is unaware of the internal code or design that the system has been built upon.The intention behind performing Black Box Testing is to find errors or bugs in the interface, data structures, behaviour, functions, initialization and termination.

Benefits of Black Box Testing are:

• This type of testing does not demand any type of coding or programming knowledge.
• It reveals all the flaws or faults in the current specifications

Drawbacks of Black Box Testing are:

• There is a chance for several bugs going undetected.
• It is not easy to design these type of tests.

There are two more categories to Black Box Testing which are;

1. Functional Testing – In this type of testing the main aim of the test is to identify if there is any type of gap between the developed features and required features.

After the input is given, the Quality analyst team will take notes of functional test cases. And once they verify the outputs the actual results will be compared along with the results that were expected.

There are different stages at which Functional testing is done, these include

1. Integration Testing
2. System Testing
3. Acceptance Testing
4. Unit Testing

2. Non-Functional Testing – The main goal behind this type of test is to focus on the non-functional aspects of the software namely:

• Durability
• Functionality
• Memory leaks
• The ability to scale 
• Performance
• Volume
• Load

Grey Box Testing 

In this type of test both a mixture of black-box testing and white-box testing was made to develop a new type of testing called Grey Box testing.

Benefits of using Grey Box Testing:

• It offers the best of both white box testing and black-box testing.
• Testers and developers have a detailed understanding of their goals while performing the test.
• Grey box testers are resources available that can be used to develop more intelligent tests.
• The complete quality of the software in its entirety gets enhanced to work towards a defined goal.

If you are in search of an agency to help you with Software Testing of your project under development, please feel free to get in touch with Legacit. Please call on 0484 4348888 to start the discussion.