The Effectiveness of Software Testing Techniques

已经提出了许多用于测试软件的正式技术，但是很少有证据表明这些技术有多有效。本研究项目的目标是1)比较各种先前开发的测试技术的故障检测能力，包括基于控制流，基于数据流和突变测试技术，以及2)评估路径表达式的部分符号评估（PSE）的有效性，PSE是一种启发式技术，用于解决测试中出现的某些语义分析问题。各种测试数据充分性标准的故障检测能力将通过为几个主题程序中的每个程序生成大量测试集来进行实验比较，并测量暴露故障的适当测试集的比例（根据各种标准）。故障检测能力也将通过研究根据一定的概率度量保证一个标准优于另一个标准的条件来分析地检验。PSE的有效性将通过测量启发式成功的案例比例来调查。

Many formal techniques for testing software have been proposed, but relatively little evidence has been gathered to indicate how effective these techniques are. The goals of this research project are 1) to compare the fault-detecting ability of various previously developed testing techniques, including control flow based, data flow based, and mutation testing techniques, and 2) to evaluate the effectiveness of partial symbolic evaluation of path expressions (PSE), a heuristic technique that addresses certain semantic analysis issues arising in testing. Fault-detecting ability of various test data adequacy criteria will be compared experimentally by generating large numbers of test sets for each of several subject programs, and measuring the proportion of adequate test sets (according to the various criteria) that expose faults. Fault-detecting ability will also be examined analytically by investigating conditions under which one criterion is guaranteed to be better than another according to certain probabilistic measures. Effectiveness of PSE will be investigated by measuring the proportion of cases in which the heuristic succeeds.