Software Testing - Correctness

Software is used in every aspect of our lives. It comes everywhere sometimes in the form of a phone, inside cars, satellites, and also in video games used by children. The run time errors encountered while using the software may lead to huge liabilities, and may affect lives of the people. As a result, the entire development team working on software has a huge responsibility in delivering the correct software.

What is Software Correctness?

A software correctness is the condition or state of the software during which it is able to perform as expected, and as per the user requirements. It also refers to the fact that the software can be used safely. The developers and testers should both verify the correctness of the software, and demonstrate how to use it before it is actually released for the end users.

How to Ensure Software Correctness?

The software correctness can be ensured by following the verification and validation process of testing. Also, brute force testing can be applied to check the outputs generated by the software by feeding a large number of inputs. Some people apply mathematical reasoning, and proofs to prove the software correctness.

Another approach to ensure the software correctness is to check the control flow paths that the software takes while performing a particular use case. If the paths taken by the software are in line with the correct path, we can infer the software correctness.

During the development of the software, it is divided into multiple components. Once individual components are ready, they are integrated. At this time, integration testing is performed to verify all the interfaces and if there is proper flow of data, and interactions among all the components.

Best Practices to Ensure Software Correctness

The best practices to ensure software correctness are listed below −

• The problem statement or the use case for the software should be clear and unambiguous.
• Before actually implementing the code, there should be a complete architecture, and design for the software.
• Testing should be done in parallel to the development of the software.
• The part of the code which has been tested thoroughly should be reused again and again.

Conclusion

This concludes our comprehensive take on the tutorial on Software Correctness. We’ve started with describing what is software correctness, how to ensure software correctness, purpose, and disadvantages of code walkthrough, and what are the best practices to ensure software correctness. This equips you with in-depth knowledge of Software Correctness. It is wise to keep practicing what you’ve learned and exploring others relevant to Software Testing to deepen your understanding and expand your horizons.