Structural and Functional Testing


Structural testing is a testing approach where the internal control structure of a program is used as a guide in the selection of test cases or test data. Functional testing on the other hand ignores the internal structure of the program but uses the functional properties as specified in the program’s requirement as the guide in the selection of test cases or test data[3].

Structural and Functional testing are similar because both testing approach requires to have an understanding how the program works either by extracting that understanding from the program’s specifications or by looking at the program code. Either way an understanding of the program is necessary in order to come up with an effective set of test cases or test data. Functional testing requires a much deeper understanding of the program compared to structural testing because in functional testing the functions in the program are being tested but in structural testing it is enough to just check the validity of the output of the program.

Even if Structural and Functional testing are different from each other with respect to how test cases are designed. It is recommended that a little both of each should be used for a more effective testing approach.
[3]W. Howden,”Functional Program Testing,” IEEE Transactions On Software Engineering, Vol. SE-6, No. 2, pp. 162-169, Mar. 1980.

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