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What we will discuss next is a specific black-box testing

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approach. So a specific instance of the general approach that

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we just saw. And this approach is the category-partition method,

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and was defined by Ostrand & Balcer in 1988 in

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an article to the peer [UNKNOWN] communication of the ACM.

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So this is a method for going from a specification,

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a description of the system, to a set of test

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cases like any other black-box testing approach by following six steps.

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So let's look at what these steps are. The first

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step is to identify independently testable features and this is

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a step that we are familiar with because its exactly

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the same step that we performed in the generic black box

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testing approach that we just discussed. The second step is

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to identify categories. Then the next step is to partition

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categories into choices. Identify constraints

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among choices. Produce and evaluate

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test case specifications. And finally, the sixth step is to generate

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test cases from test case specifications. So two of

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the key elements in these six steps are the two

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that give the name to the technique so the identification

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of the categories and the partition of these categories into

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choices. What we're going to do next is to go

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and look at each one of the steps independently, except

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for the first one. Because we're already familiar with that

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step, and this method doesn't really add much to it.