Gray Box Testing

• What is Gray Box Testing?
• Advantages of Gray Box Testing.
• Gray Box Testing Process.
• Gray Box Testing Techniques.

What is Gray Box Testing?

• Software testers use this type of software testing to test application software when they lack absolute product knowledge and only possess partial information about internal functionality and code.
  “The software testers are only partially aware of the internal structure of the product to be tested in this technique. However, if the third-party integration/caching implementation of the product is not transparent, we can test the functionality from the user aspect. So we can proceed with testing without a complete understanding of the internal structure of the product.”
• This testing method is a combination of black box testing technique and white box testing technique.

• The main aim of this software testing technique is to identify bugs resulting from incorrect internal code structure or incorrect usage of the application.
• It would be beneficial to use this method in evaluating web applications, executing integration testing, testing distributed environments, and estimating security strength.

Advantages of Gray Box Testing

• It combines the capacities of software developers and software testers to improve the overall quality of the application software under test.
• Gray box testers need not have in-depth knowledge in software programming to do the testing.
• We can test complex test scenarios or applications more effectively using this technique.
• The usage of this testing method benefits software developers as it provides them with sufficient time to fix the bugs.
• We perform this type of software testing from both the user’s point of view and the developer’s point of view, thereby increasing the effectiveness of testing.

Gray Box Testing Process

The standard steps to carry out Gray box Testing are as follows:

1. Software Testers should identify the basic control flows or key paths for testing.
2. They should identify important sub-functions that require in-depth testing.
3. Testers should determine the inputs to pass to a sub-function.
4. Testers should determine the outputs that the sub-function is likely to generate for the given inputs.
5. They should develop and execute test cases for this sub-function.
6. The results produced by the sub-function should be confirmed to be matching with the expected result for the test case.
7. Repeat steps 2-6 until all identified sub-functions are tested.

Gray Box Testing Techniques

The major techniques for performing this type of software testing are matrix testing, regression testing, pattern testing, and orthogonal array testing.

Matrix Testing:-

Involves testing all the variables used in an application software while coding. The technical risks related to the usage of each variable in the code is identified. Every variable is then analyzed based on the identified risks.

• “This technique discovers unused or un-optimized variables in the program. Unused variables are mostly eliminated from the code”.

Regression Testing:-

In this technique, we regularly execute gray box tests after every change or update made in the code to verify that the previously created and tested software still works as desired.

• “Ensures that a latest code change or bug fix has not impacted any existing functionality of the software”.

Pattern Testing:-

Involves examining the previous version of the application software in order to identify any patterns that caused defects. This helps us reveal the elements that caused the defects and how we identified the irregularities.

• “Using this information, we can improve the design of gray box test cases. This will prevent the occurrence of similar bugs in later versions of the application software under test”.

Orthogonal Array Testing:-

We prefer this approach when we require maximum code coverage with very few test cases and have large test data in hand. Uses an organized statistical method of performing tests. This is very helpful in testing complex applications.

Conclusion

• Gray box testing possesses the advantages of both white box testing and black box testing.
• It facilitates detecting defects at an earlier stage and preventing these from passing further.
• Mainly used for functional testing and testing web-based applications.

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Rajesh K

Possessing Post Graduation in Applied Electronics with a specialization in Microprocessors and embedded systems, I started my career as a faculty in computer applications. Shifted to IT industry after few years and worked as a Quality Analyst for almost 7 years.