Blog Reflection #2 (Reading Response)

    My group and I decided on working with  The Evergreen Project. This particular project involves an integrated library system. Libraries use this system to "provide their public catalog interface as well as to manage back-of-house operations such as circulation (checkouts and checkins), acquisition of library materials, and (particularly in the case of Evergreen) sharing resources among groups of libraries". I liked this choice. I am very interested to see how we can optimize this system. I like that the work we're doing will have an educational benefit, not only for us but for the libraries as well.

   This week, I also read "Intro to Testing" chapter put on the class site. While reading this, I learned I had many misconceptions regarding testing in software engineering. One of the main things I learned was: the differences between testing and debugging. Testing is the process that finds bugs, while debugging is the actual fixing of these bugs. I also learned a better order for software design while reading this chapter. Dave Gelperin and Bill Hetzel advocate: test, then code. At first, I did not understand this concept, but when they went more in depth on the subject, I got it. The author stated that this is a good model for the phases of software engineering: "design, test design, code, test code, program inspection, test inspection, test debugging, test execution, programming debugging, testing”. Testing is after almost every stage of the development here. Before reading this I did not think testing should be in every stage. 

  I also learned the difference between functional and structural testing:

·         Functional testing

o   Black box

o   Subject to input and outputs. 

·         Structural testing

o   White box

o   Looks at implementation details:

§  Programming style

§  Source language

§  Database design