| Testing software is a very important and challenging activity. This is a book for
people who test software during its development. Our focus is on object-oriented
and component-based software, but you can apply many of the techniques
discussed in this book regardless of the development paradigm. We assume our
reader is familiar with testing procedural software— that is, software written in the
procedural paradigm using languages such as C, Ada, Fortran, or COBOL. We also
assume our reader is familiar and somewhat experienced in developing software
using object-oriented and component-based technologies. Our focus is on
describing what to test in object-oriented development efforts as well as on
describing techniques for how to test object-oriented software, and how testing
software built with these newer technologies differs from testing procedural
software.
What is software testing? To us, testing is the evaluation of the work products
created during a software development effort. This is more general than just
checking part or all of a software system to see if it meets its specifications.
Testing software is a difficult process, in general, and sufficient resources are
seldom available for testing. From our standpoint, testing is done throughout a
development effort and is not just an activity tacked on at the end of a development
phase to see how well the developers did. We see testing as part of the process that
puts quality into a software system. As a result, we address the testing of all
development products (models) even before any code is written. |
