USEFUL SPECIFICATION-BASED LOGIC COVERAGE CRITERIA

Abstract

The specification-based testing can be employed to evaluate software functionalities without knowing program code. Decisions are the primary form of the pre- and post-conditions in formal specifications. This work expatiates on logic coverage criteria for specification-based testing at great length. It proposes and then expounds mask logic coverage criteria to solve the problems which existing determinant logic coverage criteria cannot solve. A feasible test case generation algorithm based on mask logic coverage criteria is developed. The test cases satisfying mask logic coverage criteria can detect those errors caused by the mask property of conditions. An experiment is conducted to compare MC/DC, RC/DC and two mask logic coverage criteria (RMCC and GMCC) on their test effectiveness and fault detection ability. It also elaborates on the constraint among conditions, how to decompose and compose a complicated decision, and the relationship among decisions. All these can respectively clarify the coupling problem among conditions, the multiple occurrences of a condition in a decision, and the location of a decision in a specification or program. Additionally, coverage criteria including full true decision coverage, full false decision coverage, all sub-decisions coverage, unique condition true coverage and unique condition false coverage are proposed. The test sets satisfying these criteria can detect respectively different types of errors. Finally, the hierarchical subsumption relation is established among these presented coverage criteria and some existing ones, and various applicable scenarios for different coverage criteria are suggested.