Generation of test inputs and the corresponding expected outputs is an essential activity in any test organization. The input data and the corresponding expected output are wedded into a test case. A collection of test data becomes a test set or a test suite.

There exist a wide range of guidelines, techniques, and supporting tools to generate test cases. On one extreme, these include guidelines such as the use of boundary value analysis while on the other there exist formal techniques for generating test data from formal specifications such as those specified in the Ζ notation. In addition, there are test generation techniques that rely exclusively on the code under test and generate tests that satisfy some code coverage criteria.

Chapters in this part of the book bring to you a varied collection of guidelines and techniques for the generation of test sets. While some techniques presented herein are basic and widely applicable, such as equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, and random testing, others such as test generation from finite state machines find uses in specific domains.