Verification

Topic 7 is about the work that happens before and around writing code. You analyse a problem (identify it, strip away what does not matter, break it into parts, and name the inputs, processes, outputs and storage), you design a solution (structure diagram, flowchart, pseudocode), you code it, and you test it with data you chose on purpose. Along the way you use a small fixed set of standard methods — linear search, bubble sort, totalling, counting, maximum, minimum, average — you protect the input with validation and verification, and you prove behaviour with trace tables and with normal, abnormal, extreme and boundary test data. Nothing in this topic requires you to be fluent in a programming language; it requires you to be exact.

Verification checks that data has been copied or entered accurately — that what is now in the computer matches the original source. It says nothing about whether the rules are obeyed and nothing about whether the source itself was right. This syllabus limits verification to two methods: the visual check and the double entry check.