Equivalence partitioning

Equivalence partitioning is one of the most commonly used specification-based black-box technique. It is a test design technique that can be used in black-box testing as in system testing. The concept of this technique is to divide a set of test conditions into groups or sets that can be considered the same, i.e., the system must handle them equivalently, hence equivalence partitioning. It can be applied at any level of testing and is often considered a good technique to use first.

We need to test only one condition from each partition because we are assuming that all the conditions in one partition will be treated in a same way by the software. We had made an assumption that if one condition in a partition work, rest conditions will also work. Conversely, if one condition in a partition does not work, then no other condition will work in that partition. This makes the testing process simpler as we don’t need to check for all the similar conditions.

An advantage of this approach is to reduce the time that is required for performing testing of a software due to some less number of test cases.

Example 1: DATE (1 to 31)

Example 2: USERNAME (6 to 10 Characters)

Boundary Value Analysis

Boundary value analysis (BVA) technique is a test case design technique based on testing the boundaries between the partitions. It is related to Equivalence partitioning because it is related to valid partition in your test data range. We have both valid boundaries (in the valid partitions) and invalid boundaries (in the valid partitions). Here an assumption is made that the system behaves differently on either side of a boundary.

Example: DATE (1 to 31)

In boundary value analysis what we do is we test on either side of the boundaries of the each valid partition.