A Semantic Framework for Test Coverage

Abstract. Since testing is inherently incomplete, test selection is of vital importance. Coverage measures evaluate the quality of a test suite and help the tester select test cases with maximal impact at minimum cost. Existing coverage criteria for test suites are usually defined in terms of syntactic characteristics of the implementation under test or its specification. Typical black-box coverage metrics are state and transition coverage of the specification. White-box testing often considers statement, condition and path coverage. A disadvantage of this syntactic approach is that different coverage figures are assigned to systems that are behaviorally equivalent, but syntactically different. Moreover, those coverage metrics do not take into account that certain failures are more severe than others, and that more testing effort should be devoted to uncover the most important bugs, while less critical system parts can be tested less thoroughly. This paper introduces a semantic approac...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: ATVA
• Authors: Laura Brandán Briones, Ed Brinksma, Mariëlle Stoelinga
• Keywords: ATVA 2006, Coverage Measures, Coverage Metrics, Hardware, Test Suites