ABSTRACT
Flowcharts have been in use since the early days of computing; as such they are likely the earliest behavioral model. The IBM Corporation even had a standard flowchart template, with varying sizes of the basic symbols. This chapter discusses the control issues that can be represented in flowcharts. In the early days of flowchart usage, much attention was paid to Input/Output (I/O) devices, and this attention was reflected in an expanded set of flowchart symbols. The NextDate function is popular in testing literature because it is easy to find the expected value of the output portion of a test case. Paths in a flowchart lead directly to abstract test cases. As flowcharts can show parallel paths, it is easy to manually derive related abstract test cases. Flowcharts are fine for calculation-intensive applications. They are less useful for event-driven applications.
