The Domain Testing Workbook

Skimmed through this and its a crap load of information, good information.

The Testing Domain Workbook is the most extensive and exhaustive work you will ever find on a specific testing technique (or related techniques if you include equivalence class analysis and boundary testing as the book does). What I like best is the combination of academic background and roots combined with practical experience and industrial practice. All the concepts are presented in a simple and approachable manner with pointers to more details for those desiring more. While the book appears daunting in size, it is only because of the extensive examples and exercises. The core of the book is very approachable and less than 100 pages. To gain mastery, working through the exercises is most useful, but you can do that over time.Many practical aspects and considerations for testing are covered that are usually skipped over in broad testing surveys or short articles. For example, many books talk about different approaches such as risk-based, scenario-based, or pair-wise testing. Books may also cover the issue of combining values for a test, but Testing Domain Workbook walks you through the details and implications of what each approach entails when applied to combining values for a domain test. Further, it provides extensive guidance of when (in which context) the advice is most applicable (or not). For example: "If you’re doing system testing after the programmers have done extensive unit testing of their variables, it will be unnecessary and wasteful to do thorough testing of secondary dimensions."The book incorporates many viewpoints, sometimes strong opinions, and pithy statements such as: "Boundaries are funny things. When people say “No one would need a value that big,” what they really mean is “I can’t imagine why anyone would need a value that big.” The world is often less constrained than the limits of our imagination. "The book is exacting and consistent in its terminology, but the reader needs to be careful to keep the concepts clear and distinct. For example: "Well-designed domain tests are powerful and efficient but aren’t necessarily representative. Boundary values are suitable for domain testing even if those values would be rare in use. The best representative of the class is the one that makes the most powerful test."So the best representative, most powerful, is not necessarily the most representative of typical values. The book focuses on boundary values and bug hunting so that typical values are unlikely to be used even though they are part of the domain. You need to use more than the one well-developed technique of this book as the authors themselves state. For example: "well-designed scenario tests are usually representative but they’re often not powerful. To test a program well, you’ll use several different techniques"You will be a better tester if you read this book. You will be a much better tester if you actually work through the exercises of the book. It was a privilege being a pre-publication reviewer of this book and I was pleasantly challenged by what I read and by doing the exercises.

Authors Kaner, Padmanabhan, and Hoffman have collaborated to deliver THE book on domain testing. More than a presentation on the mechanics or purpose of domain testing, the authors demonstrate a sincere desire to have the reader experience domain testing!If you are new to testing, I recommend reviewing the well written introduction to domain testing terms and concepts. It not only prepares you for the examples (which are the real value of the book) but provides a solid foundation for learning and growing as a tester.The succeeding section of the book invites you to explore any of the domain testing tasks and worked examples. I found this part of the book to be not only fun, but very practical for learning and applying domain testing techniques. The authors help you explore the application of the domain testing technique from tasks defined in a schema. As I continued with the book, I found it easier to make a copy of the schema for reference.Each chapter presents a short explanation of a task with examples from familiar applications. These are followed by a few testing problems. I found my real learning is in working these problems.Initially, I wondered if my application of the technique yielded something usable. I was please to find examples had been worked and the authors’ result was available in the book for comparison. Not only did this provide good feedback but it deepened my learning. I also appreciated that the test problems are progressively more challenging allowing me to experience different aspects of what the authors are conveying.Read The Domain Testing Workbook at your own pace and indulge in its excellent test problems. I recommend keeping it close by as one of your sources of testing guidance. More than a reference, it is your workbook where you create your domain testing experience, and always have it available to apply to your work.

Domain testing (known separately as equivalence class analysis and boundary testing) has been taught in many testing books over the years including another of Cem Kaner’s books Testing Computer Software. Unfortunately none of these books use anything more than rudimentary examples making it difficult for practitioners to get better. This book changes that.Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on how you look at it) this book contains highly valuable / highly useful catalogs of test ideas broken down by data types, risks and inputs. The first few times I read this book they overshadowed the other great material / instruction in the book (I mean who needs to learn the Schema if you've got all these ideas for attacking a program? I'm kidding of course.The authors present the Domain Testing Schema and then walk you through each part, explaining in great detail the various computer science concepts in an easy to understand way and providing increasingly more complex and detailed examples. It's great. I just wish I had the time to go through them. The plus side is this book makes a great reference for the whole development team!

This is an book that you need to have when you want to great better test and want to be more complete

met all expectations