what is Black box testing?

Answer 1

Black Box Testing is 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. For this reason, the tester and the programmer can be independent of one another, avoiding programmer bias toward his own work. For this testing, test groups are often used, "Test groups are sometimes called professional idiots...people who are good at designing incorrect data." 1 Also, do to the nature of black box testing, the test planning can begin as soon as the specifications are written. The opposite of this would be glass box testing, where test data are derived from direct examination of the code to be tested. For glass box testing, the test cases cannot be determined until the code has actually been written. Both of these testing techniques have advantages and disadvantages, but when combined, they help to ensure thorough testing of the product.

Advantages of Black Box Testing

more effective on larger units of code than glass box testing
tester needs no knowledge of implementation, including specific programming languages
tester and programmer are independent of each other
tests are done from a user's point of view
will help to expose any ambiguities or inconsistencies in the specifications
test cases can be designed as soon as the specifications are complete


Disadvantages of Black Box Testing

only a small number of possible inputs can actually be tested, to test every possible input stream would take nearly forever
without clear and concise specifications, test cases are hard to design
there may be unnecessary repetition of test inputs if the tester is not informed of test cases the programmer has already tried
may leave many program paths untested
cannot be directed toward specific segments of code which may be very complex (and therefore more error prone)
most testing related research has been directed toward glass box testing


http://www.cse.fau.edu/~maria/COURSES/CEN4010-SE/C13/black1.html

Answer 2

Not sure what black box testing is, but according to the general term of the black box, it means u give it your input, and it gives u ur correct output. You don't care what's happening inside the box as long as u get ur answer correctly.

If this definition is correct then, your calculator is an example of a black box. You don't know what's happening inside and u don't really care, but when you put in ur input, the ouput comes out correctly (at least most of the time when there's no buffer overflow or something of that nature)

So what u're refering to here is probably testing a program or a function. Say, someone else wrote the program or the function and u want to test it. You don't need to go through the code and read everything. Just input something that u know the answer to, then if the output is correct, then the program or function is not faulty. If there is an error, that's when you have to dismantle the code and look where everything went wrong. Otherwise, u can use this code as a part of something bigger without the need to really know what's happening inside this black box.


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Edit:
I have no idea what a white box was so I did a little research (2 second) and ended up with a good old wikipedia answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_box

btw, ur email says "not confirmed" when I tried sending u this answer

Answer 3

black box testing is a lack of satellite gps in an inexpensive manner. With a GPS receiver attached to a black box, only the black box will be able to know its own location. We are able to use GPS for tracking assets becuase those devices transmit the location information received from GPS, using various channels such as GPRS or satellite connectivity. Hence Black box testing means an area above the ocean floor most likely conducted to recieve satellite data. Signaling GPS data above territorial waters to even surface area with a technology that can not be simply manually turned off . Because of greed by smaller competiting companies this method of testing is unaccounted for.

Answer 4

Black box testing means that one does not have any further information on the program/module that one wants to test beyond what is mentioned in the specification.

This is a widely used testing technique in software/chip-verification domains to weed out errors that could be due to faulty implementation or a different interpretation of what the specification meant, in which case the specification is updated to be more specific and less open to interpretation.

This technique is used in conjunction with souce-code review aka White-box testing for debug/verification purposes.

Answer 5

The technique of testing without having any knowledge of the interior workings of the application is called black-box testing. The tester is oblivious to the system architecture and does not have access to the source code. Typically, while performing a black-box test, a tester will interact with the system's user interface by providing inputs and examining outputs without knowing how and where the inputs are worked upon.

ADVANTAGES:
->Well suited and efficient for large code segments.
->Code access is not required.
->Clearly separates user's perspective from the developer's perspective through visibly defined roles.
->Large numbers of moderately skilled testers can test the application with no knowledge of implementation, programming language, or operating systems.