The Art of Software Testing

The Art of Software TestingMost software testing books deal with software testing concepts like “What is testing?, “Types of testing” and “testing methodologies”. So when I started reading this book I expected to read a lot of the same things again. But as I progressed I felt that this book is different, Glenford Myers has done a good job. This book does cover the same subjects, but in a more interesting way. The author’s approach is practical rather than theoretical.

Author starts with two pillars of software testing – Black and White Box testing. After explaining these two basic concepts/methodologies in chapters 2, 3 and 4 Glenford goes to reviews, walkthroughs and test case design. But after finishing the book, I felt that the order of these chapters should have been different. A testing novice might find it difficult to understand the concepts of reviews/test case design directly without first understanding.

Chapter 5  onwards structure is quite good. There are chapters on Module Testing covering incremental, top-down, bottom-up testing, higher-order testing load, stress, security, performance and usability testing. I found these chapters quite interesting. The explanation of all these testing methodologies become easy to understand because of the number of examples used. With the help of examples, not only have the concepts been explained, but the author has also covered how they can be used while executing a software testing project. But for an amateur in software testing it might be difficult to digest so many concepts at one go.

The last three chapters have been dedicated to debugging, extreme programming and testing Internet applications.

But as I have mentioned above, the highlight of the book is the extensive usage of diagrams, examples and code snippets rather than reading many pages of just theory.

Overall, this book is a good read for beginners as well as the professionals who are working in software testing field.

Rating: (7 / 10 Q)
Author: Glenford J. Myers
Revised and Updated By:
Corey Sandler, Tom Badgett, Todd M. Thomas
Publisher:
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
ISBN: 0-471-46912-2
Pages: 234
Published: June 2004
Price: $110.00

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