Some Issues in Boolean Expressions Testing

Abstract

Software has become the medium of choice for enabling advanced automation in Aircraft, complex safety-critical applications, such medical and other control systems. As the capability and complexity of software-based systems increases, so does the challenge of verifying that these systems meet their requirements, including safety requirements. Mutation Analysis is a commonly used approach for verifying the effectiveness of a testing technique for safety critical software. In Mutation Testing technique faults are intentionally seeded into the program and by executing the test suite on the changed program it is analyzed whether the test suite is able to kill the entire fault. newlineIn the literature, specifications of Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) II written in form of Boolean expression are used to verify the performance of the various techniques for testing the Boolean expressions. During experimentation using TCAS II specifications, it was observed that no uniform mechanism is available for generation of mutants. As a result in empirical studies, some discrepancies are observed in number of mutants seeded for the same expression and the same fault class. newlineIn this research work, the mechanism for estimating the number of inequivalent mutants for a fault class is proposed. Fault detection criteria for Associative Shift Fault (ASF) and Clause Disjunction Fault for Boolean expression in DNF are also presented. The mechanism for generation of mutants for various fault classes is also proposed by giving the algorithm in constructive fashion. This will provide a direction for the development of testing techniques that guarantee the detection of the fault types described. newlineThe fault detection criteria for fault classes establish the relationship and interdependence of a fault class on another. The existing fault hierarchy has been further extended by assessing the inter-relationship of various fault classes and including ASF and CDF in the fault hierarchy. newline...