Software Engineering Testing tools Research Paper

Software Engineering Testing tools - Research Paper Example This research aims to evaluate and present software engineering testing tools. There are numerous software engineering testing tools available today. Many of these tools have come to be adopted and utilized as solutions to the rising demand for assurance of software quality in the software engineering industry. Within the past decade, there has been a steady increase in black-box testing techniques which are generally called model-based testing (MBT) techniques. This steady increase in black-box testing techniques may be due to the growing popularity of object orientation and modeling in software engineering. Model based testing is a general term used to indicate that a particular testing approach bases common testing tasks (like test result evaluation and test case generation) on a model of the application that is being tested. Engineering software is usually implemented in critical applications, and so improper testing can result in errors that may have severe outcomes that may cau se huge losses. In spite of the inherent limitations, software testing is an integral part of software development. It is usual for more than half of the software development time to be spent on testing the software, and this entails a critical process of selection. The Software engineering testing tools in use today are unreliable largely due to their misuse in development, as a result of poor selection Testing Purposes Testing of engineering software can be broadly deployed in various phases of the software development cycle. Testing of software involves a process of verification and validation of software programs or applications to ensure that the software is functioning as expected, and meets the technical and business requirements that the designers had in mind when designing and developing the software. Software testing is also aimed at identifying important errors, flaws or defects, in software programs that have to be corrected. (Hetzel, William C., 1988) During test planni ng it must be decided what to view as an important defect, through the reviewing of the design requirements and documents. In a broader view, we may start to question the utmost purpose of testing. Why do we need more effective testing methods anyway, since finding defects and removing the defects does not necessarily lead to better quality? The value to be derived from engineering software testing is that such tests go far beyond doing tests about the underlying code. Such activities also involve an examination of the functional behavior of