Foundations of Software Testing

Chapter 1: Preliminaries
Aditya P. Mathur
Purdue University

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Last update: December 23, 2009

Learning Objectives

Errors, Testing, debugging, test process, CFG, correctness,

reliability, oracles.
Finite state machines (Statecharts are covered with the chapter
on test generation from statecharts).
Testing techniques

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Errors, faults, failures

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Errors
Errors are a part of our daily life.

Humans make errors in their thoughts, actions, and in

the products that might result from their
actions.
Errors occur wherever humans are involved in taking
actions and making decisions.

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These fundamental facts of human

existence make testing an essential
activity.

Errors: Examples

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Error, faults, failures

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Software Quality

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Software quality
Static quality attributes: structured, maintainable,
testable code as well as the availability of correct and
complete documentation.
Dynamic quality attributes: software reliability,
correctness, completeness, consistency, usability, and
performance

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Software quality (contd.)

Completeness refers to the availability of all features listed
in the requirements, or in the user manual. An incomplete
software is one that does not fully implement all features
required.
Consistency refers to adherence to a common set of
conventions and assumptions. For example, all buttons in the
user interface might follow a common color coding
convention. An example of inconsistency would be when a
database application displays the date of birth of a person in
the database.
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Software quality (contd.)

Usability refers to the ease with which an application can be
used. This is an area in itself and there exist techniques for
usability testing. Psychology plays an important role in the
design of techniques for usability testing.
Performance refers to the time the application takes to
perform a requested task. It is considered as a non-functional
requirement. It is specified in terms such as ``This task must
be performed at the rate of X units of activity in one second
on a machine running at speed Y, having Z gigabytes of
memory."
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Requirements, input domain, behavior,

correctness, reliability

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Requirements, behavior, correctness

Requirements leading to two different programs:

Requirement 1: It is required to write a

program that inputs two integers and outputs the
maximum of these.
Requirement 2: It is required to write a
program that inputs a sequence of integers and outputs the
sorted version of this sequence.

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Requirements: Incompleteness
Suppose that program max is developed to satisfy Requirement 1.
The expected output of max when the input integers are 13 and 19
can be easily determined to be 19.

Suppose now that the tester wants to know if the two integers are to
be input to the program on one line followed by a carriage return, or
on two separate lines with a carriage return typed in after each
number. The requirement as stated above fails to provide an answer
to this question.
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Requirements: Ambiguity

Requirement 2 is ambiguous. It is not clear whether the input

sequence is to sorted in ascending or in descending order. The
behavior of sort program, written to satisfy this requirement, will
depend on the decision taken by the programmer while writing
sort.

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Input domain (Input space)

The set of all possible inputs to a program P is known as the input
domain or input space, of P.
Using Requirement 1 above we find the input domain of max
to be the set of all pairs of integers where each element in the pair
integers is in the range -32,768 till 32,767.
Using Requirement 2 it is not possible to find the input domain
for the sort program.
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Input domain (Continued)

Modified Requirement 2:
It is required to write a program that inputs a
sequence of integers and outputs the integers in this sequence
sorted in either ascending or descending order. The order of
the output sequence is determined by an input request
character which should be ``A'' when an ascending sequence
is desired, and ``D'' otherwise.
While providing input to the program, the request character is
input first followed by the sequence of integers to be sorted;
the sequence is terminated with a period.
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Input domain (Continued)

Based on the above modified requirement, the input domain
for sort is a set of pairs. The first element of the pair is a
character. The second element of the pair is a sequence of
zero or more integers ending with a period.

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Valid/Invalid Inputs
The modified requirement for sort mentions that the
request characters can be ``A'' and ``D'', but fails to answer
the question ``What if the user types a different character ?
When using sort it is certainly possible for the user to type a
character other than ``A'' and ``D''. Any character other than
``A' and ``D'' is considered as invalid input to sort. The
requirement for sort does not specify what action it should
take when an invalid input is encountered.
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Correctness vs. Reliability

Though correctness of a program is desirable, it is almost
never the objective of testing.
To establish correctness via testing would imply testing a
program on all elements in the input domain. In most cases
that are encountered in practice, this is impossible to
accomplish.
Thus correctness is established via
mathematical proofs of programs.
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Correctness and Testing

While correctness attempts to establish that the program is
error free, testing attempts to find if there are any errors in it.
Thus completeness of testing does not necessarily
demonstrate that a program is error free.

Testing, debugging, and the error removal processes

together increase our confidence in the correct functioning
of the program under test.
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Software reliability: two definitions

Software reliability [ANSI/IEEE Std 729-1983]: is the

probability of failure free operation of software over a
given time interval and under given conditions.
Software reliability is the probability of failure free
operation of software in its intended environment.

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Operational profile

An operational profile is a numerical description of how a

program is used.

Consider a sort program which, on any given execution,

allows any one of two types of input sequences. Sample
operational profiles for sort follow.

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Operational profile

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Operational profile

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Testing, debugging, Verification

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Testing and debugging

Testing is the process of determining if a program has any

errors.
When testing reveals an error, the process used to determine
the cause of this error and to remove it, is known as debugging.

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A test/debug cycle

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Test plan
A test cycle is often guided by a test plan.
Example: The sort program is to be tested to meet the
requirements given earlier. Specifically, the following needs to
be done.

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Execute sort on at least two input sequences, one

with ``A'' and the other with ``D'' as request
characters.

Test plan (contd.)

Execute the program on an empty input

sequence.

Test the program for robustness against

erroneous inputs such as ``R'' typed in as the request
character.

All failures of the test program should be recorded in a

suitable file using the Company Failure Report Form.

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Test case/data
A test case is a pair consisting of test data to be input to
the program and the expected output. The test data is a
set of values, one for each input variable.
A test set is a collection of zero or more test cases.
Sample test case for sort:
Test data: <''A' 12 -29 32 >
Expected output: -29 12 32
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Program behavior
Can be specified in several ways: plain natural language, a
state diagram, formal mathematical specification, etc.
A state diagram specifies program states and how the
program changes its state on an input sequence.
inputs.

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Program behavior: Example

Consider a menu
driven application.

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Program behavior: Example (contd.)

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Behavior: observation and analysis

In the first step one observes the behavior.
In the second step one analyzes the observed behavior to
check if it is correct or not. Both these steps could be quite
complex for large commercial programs.
The entity that performs the task of checking the
correctness of the observed behavior is known as an
oracle.
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Oracle: Example

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Oracle: Programs
Oracles can also be programs designed to check the behavior
of other programs.
For example, one might use a matrix multiplication program
to check if a matrix inversion program has produced the correct
output. In this case, the matrix inversion program inverts a given
matrix A and generates B as the output matrix.

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Oracle: Construction
Construction of automated oracles, such as the one to check
a matrix multiplication program or a sort program, requires
the determination of input-output relationship.
In general, the construction of automated oracles is a
complex undertaking.

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Oracle construction: Example

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Testing and verification

Program verification aims at proving the correctness of

programs by showing that it contains no errors. This is very
different from testing that aims at uncovering errors in a
program.

Program verification and testing are best considered as

complementary techniques. In practice, one can shed program
verification, but not testing.
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Testing and verification (contd.)

Testing is not a perfect technique in that a program might
contain errors despite the success of a set of tests.
Verification might appear to be perfect technique as it promises
to verify that a program is free from errors. However, the person
who verified a program might have made mistake in the
verification process; there might be an incorrect assumption on
the input conditions; incorrect assumptions might be made
regarding the components that interface with the program, and
so on.
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Verified and published programs have been shown

to be incorrect.

Program representation: Control flow

graphs

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Program representation: Basic blocks

A basic block in program P is a sequence of consecutive
statements with a single entry and a single exit point. Thus
a block has unique entry and exit points.
Control always enters a basic block at its entry point and exits
from its exit point. There is no possibility of exit or a halt at any
point inside the basic block except at its exit point. The entry
and exit points of a basic block coincide when the block
contains only one statement.

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Basic blocks: Example

Example: Computing x raised to y

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Basic blocks: Example (contd.)

Basic blocks

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Control Flow Graph (CFG)

A control flow graph (or flow graph) G is defined as a finite set N of
nodes and a finite set E of edges. An edge (i, j) in E connects two
nodes ni and nj in N. We often write G= (N, E) to denote a flow
graph G with nodes given by N and edges by E.

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Control Flow Graph (CFG)

In a flow graph of a program, each basic block becomes a node
and edges are used to indicate the flow of control between
blocks.
Blocks and nodes are labeled such that block bi corresponds to
node ni. An edge (i, j) connecting basic blocks bi and bj implies
that control can go from block bi to block bj.
We also assume that there is a node labeled Start in N that has no
incoming edge, and another node labeled End, also in N, that has
no outgoing edge.
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CFG Example
N={Start, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
8, 9, End}
E={(Start,1), (1, 2), (1, 3), (2,4),
(3, 4), (4, 5), (5, 6), (6, 5),
(5, 7), (7, 8), (7, 9), (9, End)}

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CFG Example
Same CFG with statements
removed.

N={Start, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
8, 9, End}
E={(Start,1), (1, 2), (1, 3), (2,4),
(3, 4), (4, 5), (5, 6), (6, 5),
(5, 7), (7, 8), (7, 9), (9, End)}

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Paths
Consider a flow graph G= (N, E). A sequence of k edges, k>0,
(e_1, e_2, e_k) , denotes a path of length k through the flow
graph if the following sequence condition holds.
Given that np, nq, nr, and ns are nodes belonging to N,
and 0< i<k, if ei = (np, nq) and ei+1 = (nr, ns) then nq =
nr. }

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Paths: sample paths through the

exponentiation flow graph
Two feasible and complete paths:

p1= ( Start, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 5, 7, 9, End)

p2= (Start, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 7, 9, End)
Specified unambiguously using edges:

p1= ( (Start, 1), (1, 2), (2, 4), (4, 5), (5,
6), (6, 5), (5, 7), (7, 9), (9, End))
Bold edges: complete path.
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Dashed edges: subpath.

Paths: infeasible paths

A path p through a flow graph for
program P is considered feasible if
there exists at least one test case which
when input to P causes p to be
traversed.

p1= ( Start, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 7, 8, 9, End)

p2= (Start, 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, , End)

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Number of paths
There can be many distinct paths through a program. A
program with no condition contains exactly one path that
begins at node Start and terminates at node End.
Each additional condition in the program can increases the
number of distinct paths by at least one.
Depending on their location, conditions can have a
multiplicative effect on the number of paths.
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Test generation

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Test generation
Any form of test generation uses a source document. In the
most informal of test methods, the source document resides
in the mind of the tester who generates tests based on a
knowledge of the requirements.
In most commercial environments, the process is a bit more
formal. The tests are generated using a mix of formal and
informal methods either directly from the requirements
document serving as the source. In more advanced test
processes, requirements serve as a source for the development
of formal models.
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Test generation strategies

Model based: require that a subset of the requirements be
modeled using a formal notation (usually graphical). Models:
Finite State Machines, Timed automata, Petri net, etc.
Specification based: require that a subset of the requirements
be modeled using a formal mathematical notation. Examples:
B, Z, and Larch.
Code based: generate tests directly from the code.

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Test generation strategies (Summary)

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Strings and languages

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Strings
Strings play an important role in testing. A string serves as
a test input. Examples: 1011; AaBc; Hello world.

A collection of strings also forms a language. For example, a set

of all strings consisting of zeros and ones is the language of
binary numbers. In this section we provide a brief introduction to
strings and languages.

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Alphabet
A collection of symbols is known as an alphabet. We use
an upper case letter such as X and Y to denote alphabets.

Though alphabets can be infinite, we are concerned only with

finite alphabets. For example, X={0, 1} is an alphabet consisting
of two symbols 0 and 1. Another alphabet is Y={dog, cat, horse,
lion}that consists of four symbols ``dog", ``cat", ``horse", and
``lion".

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Strings over an Alphabet

A string over an alphabet X is any sequence of zero or
more symbols that belong to X. For example, 0110 is a
string over the alphabet {0, 1}. Also, dog cat dog dog lion
is a string over the alphabet {dog, cat, horse, lion}.
We will use lower case letters such as p, q, r to denote strings. The
length of a string is the number of symbols in that string. Given a string
s, we denote its length by |s|. Thus |1011|=4 and |dog cat dog|=3. A
string of length 0, also known as an empty string, is denoted by .
Note that denotes an empty string and also stands for element

of when used with sets.

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String concatenation
Let s1 and s2 be two strings over alphabet X. We write s1.s2 to
denote the concatenation of strings s1 and s2.
For example, given the alphabet X={0, 1}, and two strings 011
and 101 over X, we obtain 011.101=011101. It is easy to see that
|s1.s2|=|s1|+|s2|. Also, for any string s, we have s. =s and .s=s.

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Languages
A set L of strings over an alphabet X is known as a language. A
language can be finite or infinite.
The following sets are finite languages over the binary alphabet
{0, 1}:
: The empty set
{}: A language consisting only of one string of length zero
{00, 11, 0101}: A language containing three strings
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Regular expressions
Given a finite alphabet X, the following are regular expressions
over X:
If a belongs to X, then a is a regular expression that denotes the set
{a}.
Let r1 and r2 be two regular expressions over the alphabet X that
denote, respectively, sets L1 and L2. Then r1.r2 is a regular
expression that denotes the set L1.L2.
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Regular expressions (contd.)

If r is a regular expression that denotes the set L then r+ is a
regular expression that denotes the set obtained by concatenating
L with itself one or more times also written as L+ Also, r* known
as the Kleene closure of r, is a regular expression. If r denotes the
set L then r* denotes the set {} L+.
If r1 and r2 are regular expressions that denote, respectively, sets L1
and L2, then r1r2 is also a regular expression that denotes the set L1
L2.

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Embedded systems and Finite State

Machines (FSMs)

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Embedded systems
Many real-life devices have computers embedded in them.
For example, an automobile has several embedded
computers to perform various tasks, engine control being
one example. Another example is a computer inside a toy
for processing inputs and generating audible and visual
responses.
Such devices are also known as embedded systems. An
embedded system can be as simple as a child's musical keyboard
or as complex as the flight controller in an aircraft. In any case,
an embedded system contains one or more computers for
processing inputs.
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Specifying embedded systems

An embedded computer often receives inputs from its
environment and responds with appropriate actions. While
doing so, it moves from one state to another.

The response of an embedded system to its inputs depends on its

current state. It is this behavior of an embedded system in
response to inputs that is often modeled by a finite state
machine (FSM).

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FSM: lamp example

Simple three state lamp behavior:

(a) Lamp switch can be turned clockwise.

(b) Lamp switch can be turned clockwise and counterclockwise..
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FSM: Actions with state transitions

Machine to convert a sequence of decimal digits to an integer:

(a) Notice ADD, INIT, ADD,OUT actions.

(b) INIT: Initialize num. ADD: Add to num. OUT: Output num.
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FSM: Formal definition

An FSM is a quintuple: (X, Y, Q, q0, , O), where:,

X is a finite set of input symbols also known as the input

alphabet.
Y is a finite set of output symbols also known as the output
alphabet,
Q is a finite set states,
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FSM: Formal definition (contd.)

q0 in Q is the initial state,

: Q x X Q is a next-state or state transition function, and
O: Q x X Y is an output function.
In some variants of FSM more than one state could be
specified as an initial state. Also, sometimes it is
convenient to add F Q as a set of final or accepting
states while specifying an FSM.
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State diagram representation of FSM

A state diagram is a directed graph that contains nodes
representing states and edges representing state
transitions and output functions.
Each node is labeled with the state it represents. Each directed
edge in a state diagram connects two states. Each edge is labeled
i/o where i denotes an input symbol that belongs to the input
alphabet X and o denotes an output symbol that belongs to the
output alphabet O. i is also known as the input portion of the
edge and o its output portion.
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Tabular representation of FSM

A table is often used as an alternative to the state
diagram to represent the state transition function and
the output function O.
The table consists of two sub-tables that consist of one or more
columns each. The leftmost sub table is the output or the action
sub-table. The rows are labeled by the states of the FSM. The
rightmost sub-table is the next state sub-table.

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Tabular representation of FSM:

Example
The table given below shows how to represent
functions and O for the DIGDEC machine.

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Properties of FSM
Completely specified: An FSM M is said to be completely
specified if from each state in M there exists a transition for
each input symbol.

Strongly connected: An FSM M is considered strongly

connected if for each pair of states (qi qj) there exists an input
sequence that takes M from state qi to qj.

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Properties of FSM: Equivalence

V-equivalence: Let M1=(X, Y, Q1, m10, T1, O1) and M2=(X, Y,
Q2, m20, T2, O2) be two FSMs. Let V denote a set of nonempty strings over the input alphabet X i.e. V X+.
Let qi and qj, i j, be the states of machines M1 and M2,
respectively. qi and qj are considered V-equivalent if O1(qi,
s)=O2(qj, s) for all s in V.

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Properties of FSM: Distinguishable

Stated differently, states qi and qj are considered V-equivalent
if M1 and M2 , when excited in states qi and qj, respectively,
yield identical output sequences.
States qi and qj are said to be equivalent if O1(qi, r)=O2(qj, r)
for any set V. If qi and qj are not equivalent then they are said to
be distinguishable. This definition of equivalence also applies
to states within a machine. Thus machines M1 and M2 could be
the same machine.
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Properties of FSM: Machine Equivalence

Machine equivalence: Machines M1 and M2 are said to be
equivalent if (a) for each state in M1 there exists a state ' in
M2 such that and ' are equivalent and (b) for each state in
M2 there exists a state ' in M1 such that and ' are
equivalent.
Machines that are not equivalent are considered distinguishable.
Minimal machine: An FSM M is considered minimal if the
number of states in M is less than or equal to any other FSM
equivalent to M.
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Properties of FSM: k-equivalence

k-equivalence: Let M1=(X, Y, Q1, m10, T1, O1) and M2=(X, Y,
Q2, m20, T2, O2) be two FSMs.
States qi Q1 and qj Q2 are considered k-equivalent if, when
excited by any input of length k, yield identical output
sequences.

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Properties of FSM: k-equivalence

(contd.)
States that are not k-equivalent are considered k-distinguishable.

Once again, M1 and M2 may be the same machines

implying that k-distinguishability applies to any pair of
states of an FSM.
It is also easy to see that if two states are k-distinguishable
for any k>0 then they are also distinguishable for any n k.
If M1 and M2 are not k-distinguishable then they are said to
be k-equivalent.
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Example: Completely specified machine

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Types of software testing

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Types of testing
One possible classification is based on the following four
classifiers:

C1: Source of test generation.

C2: Lifecycle phase in which testing takes place
C3: Goal of a specific testing activity
C4: Characteristics of the artifact under test
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C1: Source of test generation

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C2: Lifecycle phase in which testing

takes place

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C3: Goal of specific testing activity

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C4: Artifact under test

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Summary
We have dealt with some of the most basic concepts in
software testing. Exercises at the end of Chapter 1 will help you
sharpen your understanding.

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