A comparison of MC/DC, MUMCUT and several other coverage criteria for logical decisions

Many testing criteria, including condition coverage and decision coverage, are inadequate for software characterised by complex logical decisions, such as those in safety-critical software. In the past decade, more sophisticated testing criteria have been advocated. In particular, compliance of the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of systems and software 2006-05, Vol.79 (5), p.577-590
Main Authors: Yu, Yuen Tak, Lau, Man Fai
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Condition coverage
Coverage criteria
Decision coverage
Decision making
Logic
Logical decisions
MC/DC
MUMCUT
Software
Studies
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Summary:Many testing criteria, including condition coverage and decision coverage, are inadequate for software characterised by complex logical decisions, such as those in safety-critical software. In the past decade, more sophisticated testing criteria have been advocated. In particular, compliance of the MC/DC criterion has been mandated in the commercial aviation industry for the approval of airborne software. Recently, the MUMCUT criterion has been proposed as it guarantees the detection of certain faults in logical decisions in disjunctive normal form in which no variable is redundant. This paper compares MC/DC, MUMCUT and several other related coverage criteria for logical decisions by both formal and empirical analysis, focusing on the fault-detecting ability of test sets satisfying these testing criteria. Our results show that MC/DC test sets are effective, but they may still miss some faults that can almost always be detected by test sets satisfying the MUMCUT criterion.
ISSN:0164-1212
1873-1228
DOI:10.1016/j.jss.2005.05.030