An experimental study on software structural testing: deterministic versus random input generation

[1991] Digest of Papers. Fault-Tolerant Computing: The Twenty-First International Symposium Pub Date : 1991-06-25 DOI:10.1109/FTCS.1991.146694

P. Thévenod-Fosse, H. Waeselynck, Y. Crouzet

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引用次数: 67

Abstract

The fault revealing power of different test patterns derived from ten structural test criteria currently referred to in unit testing is investigated. Experiments performed on four programs that are pieces of a real-life software system from the nuclear field are reported. Three test input generation techniques are studied: (1) deterministic choice, (2) random selection based on an input probability distribution determined according to the adopted structural test criterion, and (3) random selection from a uniform distribution on the input domain. Mutation analysis is used to assess the test set efficiency with respect to error detection. The experimental results involve a total of 2914 mutants. They show that structural statistical testing, which exhibits the highest mutation scores, leaving alive only six from 2816 nonequivalent mutants within short testing times, is the most efficient. A regards unit testing of programs whose structure remains tractable, the experiments show the adequacy of a fault removal strategy combining statistical and deterministic test patterns.<>

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软件结构测试的实验研究:确定性与随机输入生成

研究了单元测试中常用的十种结构测试准则衍生出的不同测试模式的故障揭示能力。报告了在四个程序上进行的实验，这些程序是来自核领域的现实软件系统的一部分。研究了三种试验输入生成技术:(1)确定性选择，(2)根据所采用的结构试验准则确定的输入概率分布进行随机选择，以及(3)在输入域上均匀分布进行随机选择。突变分析用于评估测试集在错误检测方面的效率。实验结果共涉及2914个突变体。他们表明，结构统计测试是最有效的，该测试显示出最高的突变分数，在很短的测试时间内，2816个不相等的突变中只留下6个存活。对于结构易于处理的程序的单元测试，实验表明结合统计和确定性测试模式的故障排除策略是足够的。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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[1991] Digest of Papers. Fault-Tolerant Computing: The Twenty-First International Symposium

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