As systems get more complex, black-box testing exercises less and less of the application, particularly code dealing with errors or other exceptional situations. The problem here is that QA professionals often have no idea of the internal structure of the code and don t know that such error handling code exists. Then there s the problem of creating the tests in the first place, which can be a significant development effort. And with the way Web-based applications seem to undergo redesigns every six months, it s not clear how much value there is in creating automated tests that may soon be obsolete. First, look for alternative methods that complement conventional testing.
Conventional testing is often the only way to discover intent errors.
But it is very poor at finding effect errors because these tend to be edge or corner cases at least to the code. But the existence of these cases is completely hidden from the test designer. According to Capers Jones, nearly two-thirds of all defects fall into this category. What s needed are ways to find these code-level errors early in the development cycle. Studies show that inspection is more efficient and cost-effective than conventional testing.