# White box (software engineering)

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System whose internals can be viewed but not altered

"Open box" redirects here. "Open box" is also the name of the visible symbol ␣ that is sometimes used to indicate a space. See [whitespace character](/source/Whitespace_character).

Not to be confused with [White-box testing](/source/White-box_testing), [White-box cryptography](/source/White-box_cryptography), or [White box (computer hardware)](/source/White_box_(computer_hardware)).

Black box systems System Black box, Oracle machine Methods and techniques Black-box testing, Blackboxing Related techniques Feed forward, Obfuscation, Pattern recognition, White box, White-box testing, Gray-box testing, System identification Fundamentals A priori information, Control systems, Open systems, Operations research, Thermodynamic systems v t e

A **white box** (or **glass box**, **clear box**, or **open box**) is a [subsystem](/source/Subsystem) whose internals can be viewed but usually not altered.[1] The term is used in [systems engineering](/source/Systems_engineering), [software engineering](/source/Software_engineering), and in [intelligent user interface](/source/Intelligent_user_interface) design,[2][3] where it is closely related to recent[*[when?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#Chronological_items)*] interest in [explainable artificial intelligence](/source/Explainable_artificial_intelligence).[4][5]

Having access to the subsystem internals in general makes the subsystem easier to understand, but also easier to [hack](/source/Hack_(technology_slang)); for example, if a programmer can examine source code, weaknesses in an algorithm are much easier to discover.[*[citation needed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)*] That makes [white-box testing](/source/White-box_testing) much more effective than [black-box testing](/source/Black-box_testing) but considerably more difficult from the sophistication needed on the part of the tester to understand the subsystem.

The notion of a "Black Box in a Glass Box" was originally used as a metaphor for teaching complex topics to computing novices.[6]

Mathematical models for complex systems

## See also

- [Black box](/source/Black_box)

- [Gray-box testing](/source/Gray-box_testing)

## References

1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** Patrick J. Driscoll, "Systems Thinking," in Gregory S. Parnell, Patrick J. Driscoll, and Dale L. Henderson (eds.), *Decision Making in Systems Engineering and Management*, 2nd. ed., Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011, 40.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** Höök, Kristina; Karlgren, Jussi; Waern, Annika; Dahlbäck, Nils; Jansson, Carl Gustaf; Karlgren, Klas; Lemaire, Benoît (1998). "A Glass Box Approach to Adaptive Hypermedia". *Adaptive Hypertext and Hypermedia*. p. 143-170. [doi](/source/Doi_(identifier)):[10.1007/978-94-017-0617-9_6](https://doi.org/10.1007%2F978-94-017-0617-9_6). [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [978-90-481-4944-5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-90-481-4944-5).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** Karlgren, Jussi; Höök, Kristina; Lantz, Ann; Palme, Jacob; Pärgman, Daniel (1994). "The glass box user model for filtering". *Fourth International Conference on User Modeling*.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-4)** Raj, Arun (2020). "Explainable AI: From black box to glass box". *Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science*. **48** (1): 137-141. [doi](/source/Doi_(identifier)):[10.1007/s11747-019-00710-5](https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs11747-019-00710-5).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-5)** Höök, Kristina; Karlgren, Jussi; Waern, Annika (1995). "A glass box intelligent help interface". *First Workshop on Intelligent Multimodal Interfaces*.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-6)** du Boulay, Benedict; O'Shea, Tim; Monk, John (1981). "The black box inside the glass box: presenting computing concepts to novices". *International Journal of Man-Machine Studies*. **14** (3): 237-249. [doi](/source/Doi_(identifier)):[10.1016/S0020-7373(81)80056-9](https://doi.org/10.1016%2FS0020-7373%2881%2980056-9).

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