In software engineering, white box, in contrast to a black box, is a subsystem whose internals are visible to view, but usually cannot be altered. This is useful during white box testing, where a system is examined to make sure that it fulfills its requirements. Having access to the subsystem internals in general makes the subsystem easier to understand, but also easier to hack; if a programmer, for example, can examine source code, weaknesses in an algorithm are much easier to discover. This makes white box testing much more effective than black box testing, but considerably more difficult due to the sophistication needed on the part of the tester to understand the subsystem. Jump to: navigation, search Software engineering is the profession that creates and maintains software applications by applying technologies and practices from computer science, project management, engineering, application domains, and other fields. ... This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... White box testing, clear box, glass box or structural testing is used in computer programming, software engineering and software testing to check that the outputs of a program, given certain inputs, conform to the internal design and implementation of the program. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Black box testing, concrete box or functional testing is used in computer programming, software engineering and software testing to check that the outputs of a program, given certain inputs, conform to the functional specification of the program. ...

Also known as glass box, clear box, or open box. Clear box has at least two meanings: Clear box as a synonym for glass box or white box, meaning a subsystem whose internals are open to inspection. ...