JAWAHARLAL NEHRU TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY HYDERABAD MCA 2022 SOFTWARE TESTING METHODOLOGIES Previous Question Paper (March/April - 2022 - R20)

Software testing is the process of evaluating a system or its components with the intent to find whether it satisfies the specified requirements or to identify the differences between expected and actual results. It involves executing a program or application to detect defects, ensure quality, and verify that the software behaves as intended under various conditions.

The primary goals of software testing include:

• Defect Detection: Identifying bugs, errors, or vulnerabilities early in the development lifecycle to reduce the cost and effort of fixing them later.
• Quality Assurance: Ensuring the software meets the functional and non-functional requirements, including performance, security, and usability.
• Risk Mitigation: Reducing the probability of system failure in a production environment by validating critical paths and edge cases.
• Confidence Building: Providing stakeholders with evidence that the software is reliable, stable, and ready for deployment.

Path testing is a structural testing technique that aims to execute all independent paths through a program's control flow graph. Its applications focus on verifying the logic of complex decision structures within code.

Key applications include:

• Unit Testing of Complex Logic: It is used to test modules containing multiple nested loops or conditional branches where simple statement coverage is insufficient.
• Identifying Unreachable Code: By mapping all possible paths, developers can detect segments of code that can never be executed, which may indicate design flaws.
• Validation of Business Rules: It ensures that every combination of business conditions (e.g., if-else chains) results in the correct output.

For example, consider a function that calculates a discount based on customer type and purchase amount. If the logic is: