Final Exam for Software Testing 2 Class
People often ask me about the difference between commercial certification in software testing and university education. I explain that the tester certification exams typically test what people have memorized rather than what they can do.
Several people listen to this politely but don’t understand the distinction that I’m making.
I just finished teaching Software Testing 2 at Florida Tech. This is our first round with the course. Next year’s edition will be tougher. (As we work out the kinks, the course will cover more and better each time we teach it, for at least three more teachings.) Even though the course was relatively easy, I think our course’s final exam illustrates the difference between a certification exam and a university exam.
Comments welcome. Send them to me at weblog@kaner.com
FINAL EXAM–SOFTWARE TESTING 2
April 17 – 25, 2003
Due April 25, 2003. I will accept late exams – without late penalty up to 5:00 p.m. on May 1. No exams will be accepted after 5 p.m. May 1. It is essential that you work on this exam ALONE with no input or assistance from other people. You MAY NOT discuss your progress or results with other students in the class.
MAIN TASK
Use Ruby to build a high volume automated test tool to check the mathematics in Open Office spreadsheet
Total points available = 100
RUBY PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT — 25 points
1. Your development of the Ruby program should be test-driven. Use testunit (or runit) to test the Ruby program. Show several iterations in the test-driven development.
PICK YOUR FUNCTIONS — 10 points
2. You will test OpenOffice 1.0 by comparing its results to results you get from Microsoft Excel.
2a Choose five mathematical or financial functions that take one or two parameters
2b. Choose five mathematical or financial functions that take many parameters (at least 3)
INDIVIDUAL FUNCTION TESTS — 25 Points
3. Your program should generate random inputs that you will feed as parameter values to the functions that you have selected:
For each function, run 100 tests as follows
* Generate the input(s) for this function. The set you use should be primarily valid, but you should try some invalid values as well.
* Determine whether a given input is a valid or invalid input and reflect this in your output
* Evaluate the function in OpenOffice
* Evaluate the function in Excel
* Compare the results
* Determine whether the results are sufficiently close
* Summarize the results, across all 100 tests of this function
CONSTRUCT FORMULAS — 20 Points
4. Now test formulas that combine functions from the 10 functions you have used so far.
4a. Create and test 5 interestingly complex formulas. Evaluate them with 100 tests each, as you did for functions in Part 3.
RANDOMLY CONSTRUCTED FORMULAS — 20 Points
5 Now test random formulas using the same 10 functions you have used so far.
5a For 100 test cases, randomly create a formula, and randomly generate VALID input data. From here,
* Evaluate the formula in OpenOffice
* Evaluate the formula in Excel
* Compare the results
* Determine whether the results are sufficiently close
* Summarize the results of these 100 tests
BONUS PROBLEM — 20 Points
6. In questions 4 and 5, you probably discovered that you could supply a function with an input value that was valid, but then the function evaluated to a value that was not valid for the function that took this as input.
For example log (cosine (90 degrees)) is undefined. The initial input (90 degrees) is valid. Cosine evaluates to 0, which is valid, but log(0) is undefined and so cosine(90) is invalid as an input for log.
Describe a strategy that you would use to guarantee that the formula evaluates to a valid, numeric result.