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Experimental evaluation of the tolerance for control‐flow test criteria
Author(s) -
Kapoor Kalpesh,
Bowen Jonathan P.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
software testing, verification and reliability
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1099-1689
pISSN - 0960-0833
DOI - 10.1002/stvr.303
Subject(s) - reliability engineering , fault coverage , computer science , test (biology) , control flow , set (abstract data type) , code coverage , data mining , fault detection and isolation , predicate (mathematical logic) , engineering , artificial intelligence , software , paleontology , electronic circuit , electrical engineering , actuator , biology , programming language
Fault‐detection effectiveness of coverage criteria has remained one of the controversial issues in recent years. In order to detect a fault, a test set must execute the faulty statement, cause infection of the data state and then propagate the faulty data state to bring about a failure. This paper sheds some light on the earlier contradictory results by investigating the infection aspect of coverage criteria. For a given test criterion, the number of test sets satisfying the criterion may be very large, with varying fault‐detection effectiveness. In a recent work the measure of variation in effectiveness of a test criterion was defined as ‘tolerance’. This paper presents an experimental evaluation of tolerance for control‐flow test criteria by exhaustive test set generation, wherever possible. The approach used here is complementary to earlier empirical studies that adopted analysis of some test sets using random selection techniques. Four industrially used control‐flow testing criteria, Condition Coverage (CC), Decision Condition Coverage (DCC), Full Predicate Coverage (FPC) and Modified Condition Decision Coverage (MCDC) have been analysed against four types of faults. A new test criterion, Reinforced Condition Decision Coverage (RCDC), is also analysed and compared. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.