What is White Box Testing?

White box testing is a technique which ensures and validates a software application’s mechanisms, internal framework, and its components. White box testing is also known as clear box testing, glass box testing, transparent box testing, and structural testing. It concentrates fundamentally on the flow of inputs and outputs through the application and improving design and usability of the system. The testing requires programming and implementation knowledge. The motivation of this testing is to gain a deep understanding of the system. Therefore the tester needs to either understand or have access to the source code that makes up the system.

What is Verified in White Box Testing?

One of the basic purposes of white box testing is to verify a working flow for an application. White box testing verifies following in the software code:
1. It focuses primarily on strengthening security. Therefore it looks into the internal security holes of the software.
2. It looks into the broken or incomplete paths, and functionality of conditional loops in a code.
3. It tests each statement, object, and function individually.
4. It looks the flow of specific inputs through the code and also the expected output.

White Box Testing Techniques

One of the most important parts in the white box testing technique is the code coverage analysis. Code Coverage analysis eliminates gaps in a test case suite. It finds the place in a code which is unexecuted by a given set of the test case. Hence it helps in improving the quality of the software product. Let’s go coverage analysis techniques:

Statement Coverage: This technique checks every single line of code at least once.

Branch Coverage: This technique checks every possible conditional loop (if-else condition) application.

Condition Coverage: In this technique, one time code execution is mandatory when all the conditions are tested.

Multiple Condition Coverage: Each entry point of a system has to be executed at least once in this type of technique.

Decision Coverage: It is implemented to test all the Decision coverage at least once while the code is executed.

Advantages of White box testing

1. White box testing helps in optimizing the code by revealing hidden errors.
2. It becomes very easy to find out which type of input can help in testing the application effectively because the knowledge of internal coding structure is a prerequisite for this type of testing.
3. It helps in removing the extra lines of code.

Disadvantages of White box testing

1. It is a complex and expensive procedure because it requires skilled testers which must be expertise in programming and also have an understanding of the internal structure of a code.
2. Some conditions might be untested because it is impossible to test every single one.
3. By testing each path and condition make it time-consuming.