Testing Technology Glossary-F

• Filter. A stage in a software process that attempts to identify defects so they can be removed.
• Filter Efficiency. The percentage of state-detectable defects vs. the actual average number of defects detected. Typical filter efficiencies range from 10% (not often of much practical use) to 90% (nothing is perfect)>
• Flow control. When a terminal emulation program establishes communications with a mainframe application, it establishes flow control to prevent characters being lost. In some cases the mainframe application (or cluster controller) locks out the keyboard. This prevents the user from typing ahead; however, when CAPBAK is being used to record terminal sessions, the user is expected to wait for a response from the mainframe. The user, thus, imposes manual flow control to prevent data from being lost in cases where the keyboard is not locked. When CAPBAK is being run in terminal emulation mode, a record of the manual flow control is stored in the keysave and response files. When CAPBAK is transmitting keys in playback, flow control is maintained by using the information saved in these files. See also Automatic flow control.
• Flow graph. The oriented diagram, composed with nodes and edges with arrows, the shows the flow of control in a program. Also called a flow chart or a directed graph.
• Formal parameter. For an invocable element of program text, the set of variable names which are assigned value or meaning outside of the program text.
• Full report. A METRIC report which indicates a set of metrics for each of the modules in a given source file. See also Complexity report.
• Function call. A reference by one program to another through the use of an independent procedure-call or functional-call method. Each function call is the ``tail'' of a caller-callee call-pair.
• Function Keys. During a recording session with CAPBAK/X or CAPBAK/MSW, you can issue commands via function keys (i.e. your F1 to F10 keyboard function keys). During a recording session, you can use the function keys to bring up the Hotkey window (see Hotkeywindow), add comments to the keysave file, select an image or window for or the entire screen, pause, resume or terminate the session. CAPBAK/X also has additional function keys that allow you to synchronize on a character string or extract characters froman image or the entire screen. During playback, function keys can be used to slow or to quicken the speed of playback, to insert or to append new keysave records into a keysave file, to pause, to resume or to terminate a playback session.
• Functional specifications. A set of behavioral and performance requirements which, in aggregate, determine the functional properties of a software system.
• Functional test cases. A set of test case data sets for software which are derived from structural test cases.