Bug Hunting Strategies?

Question

Let\'s say you have a bug that was found in functional testing of a fairly complex part of the software. It could stem from bad/unexpected data in the database, middle-tier cod

Answer 1

I'm with @moonshadow, but I'll add that to some degree it depends on what the failure is. That is, some sorts of failure have fairly well known causes, and I'd start with the known cause

For example, on Windows systems "Access Violation" errors are almost always due to the attempt to use or look at (access) unallocated memory. To find the source of such an error, it's a good idea to look at all the places where memory is (or isn't) allocated.

If it's known that the "problem" is due to bad data, then the fix may require changes to data validation or acquisition, even once the error is traced to analysis.

One more point, while thinking through the bug it's often well worth the effort to try to create a small program for creating it.