Unlike for the bound states, several different boundary conditions are used for the continuum states above the barrier in semiconductor quantum wells. We employed three boundary conditions, infinite potential barrier boundary condition, periodic boundary condition and scattering boundary condition, and calculated the local number of states, wavefunctions and optical matrix elements for the symmetric and asymmetric quantum wells. We discussed how these quantities are related in the three boundary conditions. We argue that the scattering boundary condition has several advantages over the other two cases. These results would be useful in understanding quantum well lasers and detectors involving continuum states.