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2007.Nov.25 Sun
Return of the Blog: Pairwise testing
I haven't been blogging much lately, but it's time to spill. Miscellaneous subjects follow.
Via Michael Bolton, a paper (pdf) "Pairwise Testing: A Best Practice That Isn't", by James Bach and Patrick J. Schroeder Quotes:
This article is about another apparent best practice that turns out to be less than it seems: pairwise testing. Pairwise testing can be helpful, or it can create false confidence. On the whole, we believe that this technique is over promoted and poorly understood. To apply it wisely, we think it’s important to put pairwise testing into a sensible perspective. [...]
Pairwise testing fails when you don’t select the right values to test with. [...]
Pairwise testing fails when you don’t have a good enough oracle. [...]
Pairwise testing fails when highly probable combinations get too little attention. [...]
Pairwise testing fails when you don’t know how the variables interact. [...]
The pairwise story is one that all testers would like to believe: a small cleverly constructed set of test cases can do the work of thousands or millions of test cases. As appealing as the story is, it is not going to be true in many situations. Practitioners must realize that pairwise testing does not protect them from all faults caused by the interaction of 1 or 2 fields.