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  A semantic model of program faults (1996) [43 citations — 7 self]

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by A. Jefferson Offutt, J. Huffman Hayes
In Proc. of ISSTA’96
http://isse.gmu.edu/techrep/1995/95_110_offutt.ps
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Abstract:

Program faults are artifacts that are widely studied, but there are many aspects of faults that we still do not understand. In addition to the simple fact that one important goal during testing is to cause failures, and thereby detect faults, a full understanding of the characteristics of faults is crucial to several research areas in testing. These include fault-based testing, testability, mutation testing, and the comparative evaluation of testing strategies. In this workshop paper, we explore the fundamental nature of faults by looking at the differences between a syntactic and semantic characterization of faults. We offer definitions of these characteristics and explore the differentiation. Specifically, we discuss the concept of "size " of program faults-- the measurement of size provides interesting and useful distinctions between the syntactic and semantic characterization of faults. We use the fault size observations to make several predictions about testing and present preliminary data that supports this model. We also use the model to offer explanations about several questions that have intrigued testing researchers.

Citations

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83 Testing programs with the aid of a compiler – Hamlet - 1977
69 An Overview of the Mothra Software Testing Environment – DeMillo, Guindi, et al. - 1987
47 Effective C++, 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs – Meyers - 1998
47 Investigations of the Software Testing Coupling Effect – Offutt - 1992
45 A Theory of Fault-Based Testing – MORELL - 1990
43 Two notions of correctness and their relation to testing – Budd, Angluin - 1982
40 Predicting Where Faults Can Hide From Testing – VOAS, MORELL, et al. - 1991
29 On the statistical validation of computer programs – Mills - 1972
26 Theoretical Comparison of Testing Methods – Hamlet - 1989
19 Dynamic impact analysis: A cost-effective technique to enforce error-propagation – Goradia - 1993
19 An experimental evaluation of selective mutation – Offutt, Rothermel, et al. - 1993
11 Testing object-oriented software using the category-partition method – utt, Irvine - 1995
8 Fault modeling using the program dependence graph – Tewary, Harrold - 1994
6 An experimental evaluation of simple methods for seeding program errors – Knight, Ammann - 1985
6 Fault coupling in finite bijective functions – Wah - 1995
1 Interprocedural static analysis of sequencing constraints – Offutt, Lee, et al.