Paul E. Ammann and Paul E. Black, A Specification-Based Coverage Metric to Evaluate Test Sets, International Journal of Reliability, Quality and Safety Engineering, vol. 8, no. 4, pages 275-300, World Scientific Publishing, Singapore (December 2001). Also published as NIST-IR 6403.

Abstract:

    Software developers use a variety of formal and informal methods, including testing, to argue that their systems are suitable for building high assurance applications. In this paper, we develop another connection between formal methods and testing by defining a specification-based coverage metric to evaluate test sets. Formal methods in the form of a model checker supply the necessary automation to make the metric practical. The metric gives the software developer assurance that a given test set is sufficiently sensitive to the structure of an application's specification. We also develop the necessary foundation for the metric and then illustrate the metric on an example.

Get the paper in DVI (98k), Postscript (286k), or PDF (342k).

An earlier version was presented at HASE:
Paul E. Ammann and Paul E. Black, A Specification-Based Coverage Metric to Evaluate Test Sets, Proc. 4th IEEE International High-Assurance Systems Engineering Symposium (HASE), Washington, D.C. (Nov 1999).

This page's URL is /~black/Papers/ijrqse2001.html

Updated Fri Jan 3 10:39:13 2020

Go to Black's papers or NIST home page.