TL;DR

In the previous post, we explained that basic data types tend to cluster together and form records of data. Here are common software bugs related to records. The post is aligned with the Black Box Software Testing Foundations course (BBST) designed by Rebecca Fiedler, Cem Kaner, and James Bach.

Applications under test usually store data into the database. Data is stored in the form of records; for example, application users typically have first and last name, email, and address.

Common Operations

Finding out common operations on record dataset in a programming language of an application under test is a usually useful heuristic for finding testing ideas related to records. Here is an example of operations on Elixir Maps.

Common operations on records are:

• Search for a specific record
• Sort records
• Search based on particular record field
• Update record
• Delete record

Common Software Bugs

Based on common procedures, here is a list of common bugs:

• overflow and underflow – overflow is when we try to store data that does not fit into record size where underflow is when we try to store data without mandatory fields
• store wrong data type into the field
• retrieve based on the wrong field
• write into none existing field.