Applicability of Non-Specification-Based Approaches to Logic Testing for Software

  • Authors:

  • Noritaka Kobayashi;Tatsuhiro Tsuchiya;Tohru Kikuno

  • Affiliations:

  • -;-;-

  • Venue:
  • DSN '01 Proceedings of the 2001 International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (formerly: FTCS)
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

Abstract: Testing is a crucial part of the development of highly dependable systems. In this paper we consider testing of an implementation that is intended to satisfy a boolean formula. In the literature, specification-based testing has been suggested for this purpose. Typically, such methods first hypothesize a fault class and then generate tests. However there is almost no research that justifies fault classes proposed previously. Moreover specifications amenable to automatic test generation are not always available to testers in practice. Based on these observations, we examine the applicability of non-specification-based approaches, which need no specification in the form of a boolean formula to create tests. We compare a specification-based approach to two non-specification-based approaches, namely, random testing and combinatorial testing, which is an emerging technique based on combinatorial designs. The results of an experiment show that combinatorial testing is often comparative to specification-based testing and is always much superior to random testing.