Customer Reviews

Black-Box Testing: Techniques for Functional Testing of Software and Systems

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I agree with the review above: It's a little dry. However, it is certainly thorough, and if you're willing to sit and work through the examples, it's extremely informative. Ironically, I found a number of errors in the examples. Guess he should have applied his own methodology...

While this is a well put together book, it's reliance on the US IRS Tax Form for all examples, makes it doubtful that anyone not familiar with the form will gain much. This book is probably fine for a US Citizen, but for the rest of the world, his other books are far more accessible.

I tend to agree with all of the above reviews regarding this book. I am attempting to read this book at present and find it very difficult to understand how the different test models apply in the real world. I use to test setup for a major computer company. I am guessing that Chapter 8, Syntax Testing, or Chapter 9, Finite-State Testing, would apply. But I need more than the brief introductory paragraphs to know which one applies: Ch 8 - "Syntax testing is a powerful technique for testing command-driven software and similar applications. It is easy to do and is supported by commercial tools". vs Ch 9 - "Originally motivated by hardware logic testing, the finite-state machine model is an excellent model for testing menu-driven applications." The material in the chapters is thorough but dry.

You need a math background including set theory, graph theory, calculus, and combinatorics, in order to get much of anything out of this book.

And, what you'll get has no practical application at all to real world, every day, practical software testing.

This book belongs in a senior level math or comp.sci. college class. Fascinating reading, but don't buy this book if you need to learn how to do software testing in the real world. Buy it if you've been a software test team leader for several years, and have some academic interest in exploring the mathematical robustness of your test suites.

If you don't "Memorize" Chapter 1 and 2 It is impossible to understand this book. I realy did not like his approach. I prefer people explain to me and understand the example instead of forcing us to memorize. If you are software Quality Engineer and tester and if you think you can use example of this book to devlope test script, forget this book. it is useless without memorizing above listed chapter.

Dr. Beizer appears to use the medium of a textbook on black box testing, which is the domain of testers without knowledge of source code or design, to promote the opinion that independent testing is useless except to protect the independent tester. Later, he admits that 80 percent of an average product lifecycle is maintenance phase, which he admits is an appropriate use of independent testers, as he admits also their use for specialized testing tools such as performance tools. His techniques may be effective but an executive level review of this book could be dangerous to the future of quality software engineering practices.