Tester’s Nightmare – A Large Number of Input Combinations

by Nataliia Vasylyna | February 24, 2016 10:25 am

Every specialist from software testing company faces the need of checking a huge number of input combinations. It is a real challenge, as it takes too much time and efforts. Sometimes even the whole life will not be enough to test all possible input data.

Moreover, the specialists should have all needed tools and resources to perform desktop testing[1], web application testing or mobile testing[2]. Unexperienced testers have some interesting thoughts about such a situation.

What to Do in Case of a Large Number of Input Combinations?

• Give up. It is useless even to start testing. The quantity of test cases is too big. For a mortal being, it is impossible to perform such software testing.
• Check all combinations. One should forget about his family, rest, food and sleep and continue testing all day and night.
• A tester may select several tests, run them and hope that developers have done their work perfectly.
• A specialist may use the test cases which he has already run. It will save some time to create other ones.
• Only the simplest test cases should be created and run to conduct functional testing[3]. It is enough for effective checking procedure.
• It is necessary to make a list of all possible inputs and test only the first several or choose a random combination.

Of course, all mentioned solutions are not correct. The rational approach should be applied to perform software testing effectively in case of a huge number of input combinations.

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• Automation, AI Testing, and Accessibility: Key Trends from VDS 2025[6]

Source URL: https://blog.qatestlab.com/2016/02/24/large-inputs-number/

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