I advocate prevention rather than cure, that is to say, spend sufficient time on code design to limit the complexity of testing and equally to make it a doddle to maintain. In my experience even the most daunting of requirements can and should be reduced to the simplest technical design that does the job.

Or to quote CJ Date: An introduction to database systems, a computer system should reflect the simplest model capable of supporting the data rather than an effort to model the real world.

Update: But, if you've arrived at the end of that road, willingly or not: the most popular standard for a "complete" test set seems to be the set of functionally unique (but may be arbitrarily chosen) permutative cases for each requirement specified for the system.

-M

Free your mind

In reply to Re: when do you stop writing test? by Moron
in thread when do you stop writing test? by Qiang

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