Gray Box Testing
Gray Box Software Testing
As one can understand with the name Grey box testing, it is a combination of White Box testing (tester having the knowledge of internal functionality/ code of the application) and Black Box testing (tester having no knowledge of internal functionality). It is performed on the software product with the partial/ limited information of the internal functionality. Testers usually have access to the database, detailed design documents and information about the requirements of the product. Testers have the knowledge of the basic working of code and the algorithms used which is helpful in designing the test cases but does not know the exact code so the testing is done normally from the tester's viewpoint.
Gray box testing: Grey Box Testing or Gray box testing is a software testing technique to test a software product or application with partial knowledge of internal structure of the application. The purpose of grey box testing is to search and identify the defects due to improper code structure or improper use of applications.
Why Gray Box Testing
Gray Box Testing is performed for the following reason,
- It provides combined benefits of both black box testing and white box testing both
- It combines the input of developers as well as testers and improves overall product quality
- It reduces the overhead of long process of testing functional and non-functional types
- It gives enough free time for a developer to fix defects
- Testing is done from the user point of view rather than a designer point of view
Steps to perform Grey box Testing are
- Step 1: Identify inputs
- Step 2: Identify the outputs
- Step 3: Identify the major paths
- Step 4: Identify Subfunctions
- Step 5: Develop inputs for Subfunctions
- Step 6: Develop outputs for Subfunctions
- Step 7: Execute test case for Subfunctions
- Step 8: Verify the correct result for Subfunctions
- Step 9: Repeat steps 4 & 8 for other Subfunctions
- Step 10: Repeat steps 7 & 8 for other Subfunctions
- Grey box testing is suited more for GUI, Functional Testing, security assessment, web applications, web-services, etc.
- The grey box also helps in verifying the requirements again in the testing phase as all the software requirement documents, architectural diagrams are shared with the testers.
- It is very much beneficial in Integration testing and Penetration testing of an application.
- Even though the testers have the knowledge of code, but the Grey box testing is done from the user’s point of view rather than the developer’s point of view.
- It reduces the task of testing the software application separately from the functional and nonfunctional perspective as both can be covered in Grey box testing.
- Test coverage is comparatively less in Grey box testing as a comparison to separate Black box testing and white box testing.
- For large applications, it takes a lot of time in covering each input path which in turn increases the project budget and can hamper the project deadline.
- Failure in some interrelated functionality of the application can cause hindrance while performing it and the association of bugs in Grey box testing is difficult in the case of a distributed environment.
- Practically, it can not be performed completely as not all organizations allow access to code to the testers due to security reasons.
The test cases for grey box testing may include, GUI related, Security related, Database related, Browser related, Operational system related, etc.