Software testability

Article summary

Software testability is the degree to which a software artifact (e.g. a software system, module, requirement, or design document) supports testing in a given test context. If the testability of an artifact is high, then finding faults in the system (if any) by means of testing is easier. Formally, some systems are testable, and some are not. This classification can be achieved by noticing that, to be testable, for a functionality of the system under test "S", which takes input "I", a computable functional predicate "V" must exists such that V(S,I) is true when S, given input I, produce a valid output, false otherwise. This function "V" is known as the verification function for the system with input I. Many software systems are untestable, or not immediately testable. For example, Google's ReCAPTCHA, without having any metadata about the images is not a testable system. Recaptcha, however, can be immediately tested if for each image shown, there is a tag stored elsewhere. Given this meta information, one can test the system. Therefore, testability is often thought of as an extrinsic property which results from interdependency of the software to be tested and the test goals, test methods used, and test resources (i.e., the test context).…

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Discussion questions

1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
2. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

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