System testing vs. Unit testing

[Alicia Z]

In section 17.2 (Taylor, 2009:523), he explained “black-box” and “glass-box” with the following sentences:

Sometimes system testing is called black-box testing because the evaluation progresses without any knowledge of how the system operates, and by contrast unit testing is sometimes called glass-box testing since we are “seeing inside” the system (“box”) when doing the tests.

But on the other hand, in the video “What to evaluate“, on the slide titled “Unit testing: glass box vs. black box”, “black box” is referred to the tests that are used to measure “the performance of an individual component“.

It seems that black-box testing is the overall system testing according to Taylor. Is there a conflict between these two versions of explanations?

[Simon]

This is potentially confusing – and we don’t want to get hung up on terminology. I’ve added some clarification.

[Author]

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