Test Design Techniques Flashcards

State transition testing is MOST appropriate when:

Answer: The system reacts differently depending on its current state and input events

State transition testing is used when a system's response depends on both the current state and the triggering event, making it ideal for systems modeled as finite state machines.

In a state transition diagram, what does a 'transition' represent?

Answer: A movement from one state to another triggered by an event or condition

A transition represents the change from one state to another, triggered by a specific event, sometimes with a guard condition or resulting action.

Use case testing derives test cases from:

Answer: Interactions between actors and the system that deliver value

Use case testing creates test cases from use cases that describe how actors (users or systems) interact with the system to achieve a goal, ensuring end-to-end scenarios are validated.

Which coverage criterion requires that every valid and invalid transition in a state transition model be exercised at least once?

Answer: Transition coverage

Transition coverage (also called 0-switch coverage) requires that every transition—both valid and invalid—in the state model be exercised at least once.

A tester finds that a field accepts alphabetic characters when only numeric input should be allowed. Which black-box technique BEST helps design a test case to detect this flaw?

Answer: Equivalence partitioning with an invalid partition for non-numeric input

Equivalence partitioning identifies an invalid partition (non-numeric characters) and a single test case from that partition would reveal that the input validation is missing.

Which test design technique is SPECIFICALLY designed to handle situations where the same input can produce different outputs depending on previous inputs?

Answer: State transition testing

State transition testing handles systems where history (current state) determines how a given input is processed, unlike stateless techniques like equivalence partitioning or BVA.

When designing test cases using a decision table, a 'don't care' condition (marked as '-') means:

Answer: The value of that condition does not affect the rule's outcome

A 'don't care' entry means the condition value (true or false) has no impact on the action for that rule, allowing the table to be compressed and reducing the number of test cases.