Perspectives on White-Box Testing: Coverage, Concurrency, and Concolic Execution

Abstract

The last years have seen a fruitful exchange of ideas between automated software verification and white-box software testing; the industrial impact of concolic testing for sequential software is the most notable result of this interdisciplinary effort. While concolic testing is very successful at finding bugs, and even achieves verification in the limit, it is often hard to quantify the progress it achieves towards verification. In this paper, we survey two recent projects which aim to remedy this situation: In the FQL project, we devise a test specification language which facilitates precise specification of coverage criteria, and a separation of concerns between test specification and test case generation. In con2colic testing, we develop a concolic testing methodology for concurrent programs where progress is measured in terms of the data flow between program threads.