Title :
Test generation for Boolean expressions
Author :
Paradkar, Amit ; Tai, K.-C.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci., North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC, USA
Abstract :
We propose a new strategy for generating test cases for Boolean expressions. In the past, we reported the BOR (Boolean Operator) strategy for generating test cases for predicates which are singular: which contain only one occurrence of each constituent Boolean variable. We also reported results of the empirical studies that were carried out to study the effectiveness of the strategy, but the BOR algorithm did not work well with non-singularities: multiple occurrences of constituent Boolean variables. The solution we propose for the problem is a combination of the original BOR strategy and the MI (Meaning Impact) strategy reported elsewhere. Our approach is to divide a Boolean expression into components that do not have common variables, apply the MI strategy to non-singular components, and the BOR strategy to singular components, and then apply the BOR strategy to combine the test sets generated for all component. Our empirical results indicate that our hybrid approach produces fewer tests for a Boolean expression than the MI strategy. The fault detection capability of our proposed approach has also been found to be comparable to that of the MI strategy. Our test generation strategy can be used to improve the reliability and safety of a program
Keywords :
Boolean functions; algebraic specification; automatic test software; formal specification; program testing; software reliability; BOR; BOR algorithm; Boolean Operator; Boolean expression; Boolean expressions; Boolean variable; Meaning Impact strategy; fault detection; nonsingularities; software reliability; software safety; test generation; test generation strategy; Computer science; Content addressable storage; Fault detection; NASA; Partitioning algorithms; Safety; Testing; Tree graphs;
Conference_Titel :
Software Reliability Engineering, 1995. Proceedings., Sixth International Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Toulouse
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-7131-9
DOI :
10.1109/ISSRE.1995.497649