Research seminar

1. Dr. S. Vilkomir, Research directions in software testing.

2. Brandi Amstutz, Combinatorial Approach to Testing Mobile Applications: An Experimental Investigation.

Monday, October 28 2013

Room 232 S&T Bld. 1

Research directions

in software testing

Dr. S. Vilkomir

1. Effectiveness of combinatorial testing for logical expressions

2. Effectiveness of MC/DC

3. Testing mobile applications on different devices

1. Effectiveness of combinatorial testing for logical expressions

Combinatorial testing:

• Each choice

• Base Choice

• Pair-wise

• t-way

Pair-wise testing

–Dest: London, Paris, Chicago, NY

–M: 1000, 2000, 3000

–Direct: Y, N

Dest M Direct

t1 L 1 Y

t2 L 2 N

t3 L 3 -

t4 P 1 -

t5 P 2 Y

t6 P 3 N

t7 C 1 N

t8 C 2 -

t9 C 3 Y

t10 N 1 Y

t11 N 2 N

t12 N 3 -

Pair-WisePair-Wise: A value of each level for each factor must be combined : A value of each level for each factor must be combined with a value from every levels for each other factor.with a value from every levels for each other factor.

Our results

• Fault Evaluator tool

http://core.ecu.edu/STRG/tools.html

• Four research papers:

• PSAM 10, Seattle, Washington, USA

• PIC-2010, Shanghai, China

• ICST 2012, Montreal, Canada

• ICSTW 2013,Luxembourg, Luxembourg

http://core.ecu.edu/STRG/publications.html

New book

Introduction to Combinatorial Testing

by

D. Richard Kuhn,

Raghu N. Kacker, and

Yu Lei

2. Effectiveness of MC/DC

• “Independent affect” is the main idea of Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC)

• Suggested in 1992-1994 for avionic software

• DO-178B. Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification. USA, 1992.

• Chilenski, J. and Miller, S. Software Engineering Journal, 1994

Modified Condition/Decision Coverage

• Every point of entry and exit in the program has been invoked at least once, every condition in a decision in the program has taken on all possible outcomes at least once, every decision in the program has taken all possible outcomes at least once, and each condition in a decision has been shown to affect the decision's outcome independently.

A condition is shown to affect a decision's outcome independently by varying just that condition while holding fixed all other possible conditions.

From DO-178B.

9

3

1

2

• Do these test cases satisfy MC/DC?– t1: <1, 0, 1> d= 1

– t2: <0, 1, 1> d= 1

– t3: <0, 1, 0> d= 0

– t4: <0, 0, 1> d= 0

• Holding conditions – OK• Affect the decision's outcome – OK• Answer: YES

d = A (B C)

Plans – to continue this research direction

3. Testing mobile applications on different devices

Practical questions

• No scientific approaches

• No justification

• Optimal set of devices?

• Our approach – next presentation