Editing White-box testing (section)

{{short description|Method of software testing of internal structure}}
{{more citations needed|date=February 2013}}
{{Black-box}}
'''White-box testing''' (also known as '''clear box testing''', '''glass box testing''', '''transparent box testing''', and '''structural testing''') is a method of [[software testing]] that tests internal structures or workings of an application, as opposed to its functionality (i.e. black-box testing). In white-box testing, an internal perspective of the system is used to design test cases. The tester chooses inputs to exercise paths through the code and determine the expected outputs. This is analogous to testing nodes in a circuit, e.g. in-circuit testing (ICT).
White-box testing can be applied at the [[unit testing|unit]], [[integration testing|integration]] and [[system testing|system]] levels of the software testing process. Although traditional testers tended to think of white-box testing as being done at the unit level, it is used for integration and system testing more frequently today. It can test paths within a unit, paths between units during integration, and between subsystems during a system–level test. Though this method of test design can uncover many errors or problems, it has the potential to miss unimplemented parts of the specification or missing requirements. Where white-box testing is design-driven,<ref>{{citation |url=https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20040014965.pdf |page= 25 |quote= [Glossary] White Box Testing: '''Design-driven''' testing where engineers examine internal workings of code |author= Stacy Nelson |title= NASA/CR–2003-212806 Certification Processes for Safety-Critical and Mission-Critical Aerospace Software  |date= June 2003 |publisher= [[Ames Research Center]] }}</ref> that is, driven ''exclusively'' by agreed specifications of how each component of software is required to behave (as in [[DO-178C]] and [[ISO 26262]] processes), white-box test techniques can accomplish assessment for unimplemented or missing requirements.

White-box test design techniques include the following [[code coverage]] criteria:
* [[Control flow]] testing
* Data flow testing
* Branch testing
* Statement coverage
* Decision coverage
* [[Modified condition/decision coverage]]
* Prime path testing
* Path testing