Orthogonal array testing is a
black box testing technique that is a systematic,
statistical
Statistics (from German: ''Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industria ...
way of
software testing.
It is used when the number of inputs to the system is relatively small, but too large to allow for exhaustive testing of every possible input to the
systems
A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and express ...
.
It is particularly effective in finding errors associated with faulty
logic within
computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...
software systems.
s can be applied in
user interface testing,
system testing
System testing is testing conducted on a complete integrated system to evaluate the system's compliance with its specified requirements.
System testing takes, as its input, all of the integrated components that have passed integration testing. ...
,
regression testing,
configuration testing and
performance testing.
The
permutations of factor levels comprising a single treatment are so chosen that their responses are uncorrelated and therefore each treatment gives a unique piece of
information. The net effects of organizing the experiment in such treatments is that the same piece of information is gathered in the minimum number of
experiments.
Background
Orthogonal vector
Orthogonal vectors exhibit
orthogonality
In mathematics, orthogonality is the generalization of the geometric notion of ''perpendicularity''.
By extension, orthogonality is also used to refer to the separation of specific features of a system. The term also has specialized meanings in ...
. Orthogonal vectors exhibit the following properties:
* Each of the vectors conveys information different from that of any other vector in the sequence, i.e., each vector conveys unique information therefore avoiding redundancy.
* On a linear addition, the signals may be separated easily.
* Each of the vectors is
statistically independent of the others, i.e., the correlation between them is nil.
* When linearly added, the resultant is the arithmetic sum of the individual components.
Technique
[ ]
Benefits
* Testing cycle time is reduced and analysis is simpler.
* Test cases are balanced, so it's straightforward to isolate defects and assess performance. This provides a significant cost savings over
pair-wise testing.
References
External links
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{{Software testing
Survival analysis
Design of experiments