Improving Test Suites via Operational Abstraction

g Test Suites via Operational Abstraction Michael Harder Jeff Mellen Michael D. Ernst MIT Lab for Computer Science 200 Technology Square Cambridge, MA 02139 USA {mharder,jeffm,mernst}@lcs.mit.edu This paper presents the operational difference technique for generating, augmenting, and minimizing test suites. The technique is analogous to structural code coverage techniques, but it operates in the semantic domain of program properties rather than the syntactic domain of program text. The operational difference technique automatically selects test cases; it assumes only the existence of a source of test cases. The technique dynamically generates operabstractions (which describe observed behavior and are syntactically identical to formal specifications) from test suite executions. Test suites can be generated by adding til the operational abstraction stops changing. The resulting test suites are as small, and detect as many faults, as suites with 100% branch coverage, and are better at de...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: ICSE
• Authors: Michael Harder, Jeff Mellen, Michael D. Ernst
• Keywords: ICSE 2003, Software Engineering