A SPECIFICATION-BASED COVERAGE METRIC TO EVALUATE TEST SETS

Abstract

Software developers use a variety of formal and informal methods, including testing, to argue that their systems are suitable for building high assurance applications. In this paper, we develop another connection between formal methods and testing by defining a specification-based coverage metric to evaluate test sets. Formal methods in the form of a model checker supply the necessary automation to make the metric practical. The metric gives the software developer assurance that a given test set is sufficiently sensitive to the structure of an application's specification. We also develop the necessary foundation for the metric and then illustrate the metric on an example.