Fault Classes and Fault Coupling in Boolean Specifications

Published

June 1, 2004

Author(s)

Vadim Okun, Paul E. Black, Y Yesha

Abstract

ult-based testing strategies generate tests to detect faults belonging to a preselected set of simple fault classes. A hierarchy of fault classes and the infrequency of fault coupling let us rely on these strategies to detect many other faults, too.For Boolean specifications, Kuhn proved that there is a hierarchy of fault classes with respect to detectability. This implies that some fault classes may be ignored during test generation. We prove that Kuhn's hierarchy holds for a general form of Boolean specifications, then consider detectability of another fault class.Fault coupling occurs when a test set can detect faults in isolation, but not in combination; a low incidence of fault coupling is desirable. Using Kuhn's technique, we show that fault coupling does not occur for some important fault classes in expressions containing a restricted set of Boolean operators.

Citation

Acm Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

coupling effect, fault coupling, fault-based testing, mutation testing

Citation

Okun, V. , Black, P. and Yesha, Y. (2004), Fault Classes and Fault Coupling in Boolean Specifications, Acm Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (Accessed April 20, 2025)