Fault Masking

Software Testing Blog

Fault Masking

is an occurrence, in which one defect prevents the detection of another, there are two perspectives to understanding fault masking.

Show-stopper defects simply clarify the fault-masking, if you test a Login form consisting of two data fields, “Login” and “Cancel” buttons, and the “Remember me” check box, then press “Login”, an unhandled exception fires, so if the “Remember me” check box didn’t work you will never know until a successful Login process has been done.

Technically It’s a used technique (by developers) to prevent error results from appearing.

For example, if the “Negative Value” cause a system unhandled exception to fire, the developer may prevent the negative values input instead of handling it, explicitly it solves the issue and preventing another defect from appearing but implicitly if the values entered manually in the database and the system goes to retrieve it, an unhandled exception may fires.

So, as a test engineer, you can uncover it by using the Black/White Box techniques by entering the data manually in the database and trying to retrieve it by the application.

LinkedIN : Samer Desouky – 20, Aug 2013