Graybox - Non inclusive term?

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** letthemeatgrass

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Jun 9, 2021, 3:54:36 PM6/9/21
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Hi All,

We've had a suggestion from an employee in our company to add "Graybox" to our list of non-inclusive terms.  We are reviewing it now so I wanted to reach out and see if anyone has run into this?  We don't want to add simply because it falls inbetween blackbox and whitebox.  Can I get your thoughts on this?

Marques, Michele

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Jun 9, 2021, 4:04:33 PM6/9/21
to ** letthemeatgrass, Inclusive Naming Initiative

How is the term “graybox” used? What does it mean?

 

Michele

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Matthew Schnoor

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Jun 9, 2021, 4:13:51 PM6/9/21
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Per Wikipedia, it looks like this is a testing approach that uses a mix of both "black-box" and "white-box" methods.


If someone wanted to replace "black-box" with "opaque" or "non-transparent", and "white-box" with "transparent"... then it seems to me that "gray-box" could be replaced with either "partial-visibility" or "partially-transparent", or something else that is similar.

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- Intel Corporation
- Matthew A. Schnoor

Stephen Augustus (augustus)

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Jun 9, 2021, 4:31:58 PM6/9/21
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Agreed with Matthew!
Karthik kicked off a discussion about this in Kubernetes WG Naming: https://groups.google.com/g/kubernetes-wg-naming/c/r1qHEOLHiLg

From Jordan Liggitt on that thread:
"Black box" is usually used in these contexts:
  • "Black box testing", in which tests only observe external behavior, and not the internal implementation. I'd suggest "behavioral testing" as an alternative here.
  • A system being a "black box", or unobservable. "Opaque" might be a better alternative here.

Things to consider from the Wikipedia article linked below:

Positive Effects

  • Offers combined benefits: As Gray-box testing is combination of white-box and black-box testing, it serves advantages from both the testings.
  • Non Intrusive: It is based on functional specification, architectural view whereas not on source code or binaries which makes it invasive too.
  • Intelligent Test Authoring: Gray-box tester handles intelligent test scenario, for example, data type handling, communication protocol, exception handling.
  • Unbiased Testing: In spite of all above advantages and functionalities, Gray-box testing maintains boundary for testing between tester and developer.[11]

Negative Effects

  • Partial code coverage: In gray-box testing, source code or binaries are missing because of limited access to internal or structure of the applications which results in limited access for code path traversal.
  • Defect Identification: In distributed applications, it is difficult to associate defect identification. Still, Gray-box testing is a boon to find how appropriate these systems throw exceptions and how fine are these exceptions handled in distributed systems having web services environment.[11][12]

"Behavioral", "unbiased", "intelligent", "partial" jump out as some nice keywords to dig into.

"Black box": I know nothing about the system under test. I'm trying to validate assumptions about its behavior.
"White box": I know "everything" about the system under test and have a lot of control to introspect the implementation. Does this code work knowing what I think know about the system?

How would you describe splitting the difference between the two?

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