test objects design

StickyMinds.com :Bolton : Test Patterns

“In this column I’ll summarize the HTSM’s nine categories of techniques for testing systems. Notice the term “systems” rather than “programs.” The former, more general term allows flexibility in modeling what we have to test, from a single line of code to a functional module, an application, or a suite of interacting applications and the platforms on which they work. The scope of the effort affects the techniques we choose and the ways in which we use them.(…)

I’ve noted in previous columns that coverage is the extent to which we’ve tested the system according to our mental models. Each test technique in the HTSM affords us a different way of modeling the product. Each technique is a heuristic—a fallible method for solving testing problems. No single technique can reveal all of the information that we seek about a system, but a variety of techniques will reveal more bugs—and more varieties of bugs”