Software Testing Services Companies: Checking Program Paths (Coverage Criteria)
Software testing services companies will provide a variety of vital qa services so that to ensure the best quality of manufactured IT products and increase satisfaction of the target audience.
Execution path of a program is referred to as a unique sequence of commands that are run by the program for a specific input. Not only may a full execution path undergo testing, but also its separate parts. Actually, it is impossible to test all possible paths of execution in a software program. For this reason, testing experts select the most critical paths that need to be obligatorily tested. While making this selection they use special criteria known as coverage criteria. In contrast to an unrealistic idea of performing a complete testing, these criteria determine how many tests can be really executed. Coverage criteria are sometimes called as logic coverage criteria or completeness criteria.
Now it is time to get familiar with the 3 types of criteria to be used by software testers in most cases:
- line coverage criteria;
- branch coverage criteria;
- condition coverage criteria.
When testing process is organized in accordance with these criteria, it is referred to as path testing.
One can hardly do without load testing companies if there is a necessity to verify performance parameters of software apps. A system or program is deliberately subjected to work level that approaches the threshold of its specification. As a result, it becomes possible to understand the behavior of the test object in terms of stability and responsiveness.
Line coverage criterion is the weakest of all the 3 criteria. It requires that each line in the code has been executed at least once. And although it involves much more work than many programmers usually do, however, these efforts are not sufficient to test a software program thoroughly and appropriately. If the line contains decision statement then it is required to check all the decision control values.
Branch coverage criterion is stronger than the previous criterion. Branch coverage is a more thorough testing method where a programmer checks the program version (a) and one of the three disgraced options.
Condition coverage criterion is the strongest. Condition coverage is a testing method designed to check all the components of each logic condition.
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