Domain Testing: Divide and Conquer - Testing Education

Appendix A: Equivalence Class Analysis Heuristics (continued)
Heuristic 3: Enumerated field
Analysis:
� Such variables usually are fields representing menus, drop-down combo
boxes, lists or radio buttons or any form of fixed number of available choices.
Such values are enumerated values (set of options/choices) and the
corresponding variable is called a enumerated variable.
� Every option is an equivalence class in its own right since each option has the
program/function respond differently. Depending on the time available, you
would either test for all options or would randomly pick some options for test.
� Look for a grouping strategy within the list of options, if you can find one,
then form partitions (sub-domains) and select a test case from each partition.
Step 1: Identify the risks associated with this variable.
• Failure to process each of the values in the enumerated set correctly
• Mishandling of values outside the enumerated set.
Step 2: Determine the input domain
The input domain is the set of values that can ever be inputted to the enumerated
field.
Step 3: Partition the input domain based on the identified risks.
The following is the corresponding equivalence class table for this example:
© Sowmya Padmanabhan, 2003
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