Black Box Testing

Testing without knowledge of the internal workings of the item being tested. For example, when black box testing is applied to software engineering, the tester would only know the “legal” inputs and what the expected outputs should be, but not how the program actually arrives at those outputs. It is because of this that black box testing can be considered testing with respect to the specifications, no other knowledge of the program is necessary The advantages of this type of testing include: 1. The test is unbiased because the designer and the tester are independent of each other. 2. The tester does not need knowledge of any specific programming languages. 3. The test is done from the point of view of the user, not the designer. 4. Test cases can be designed as soon as the specifications are complete. The disadvantages of this type of testing include: 1. The test can be redundant if the software designer has already run a test case. 2. The test cases are difficult to design. 3. Testing every possible input stream is unrealistic because it would take a inordinate amount of time; therefore, many program paths will go untested.