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Software Testing Faults/Errors/Failures

The document discusses software faults, errors, and failures, defining each term and providing examples. It also covers topics like the relative costs of fixing bugs found at different stages of development, how most bugs originate from issues with specifications and design rather than code, and whether truly bug-free software is attainable.

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salik
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74 views

Software Testing Faults/Errors/Failures

The document discusses software faults, errors, and failures, defining each term and providing examples. It also covers topics like the relative costs of fixing bugs found at different stages of development, how most bugs originate from issues with specifications and design rather than code, and whether truly bug-free software is attainable.

Uploaded by

salik
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Software Testing

Faults/Errors/Failures
Software Faults, Errors and Failures

• Error:
– a human action that produces an incorrect result.
also referred to as Mistake.
– it is the developer mistake that produce a fault.
– Often, it has been caused by human activities such
as the typing errors.
Software Faults, Errors and Failures

• Fault: (commonly named “bug/defect”)


– a defect in a system.
– The result of an error being made is a fault,
– It is something that is wrong in the software
– A failure may be caused by the presence of
one or more faults on a given system.
However, the presence of a fault in a system
may or may not lead to a failure, e.g., a
system may contain a fault in its code but on
a fragment of code that is never exercised so
this kind of fault do not lead to a software
failure.
Software Faults, Errors and Failures
• Failure:
– a deviation of the software from its
expected delivery or service.
– Occurs when fault executes
– an observable incorrect behavior or state of
a given system.
– In this case, the system displays a behavior
that is contrary to its
specifications/requirements. Thus, a failure
is tied (only) to system
executions/behaviors and it occurs at
runtime when some part of the system
enters an unexpected state.
Example … LOC Code
1 program double ();
2 var x,y: integer;
3 begin
4 read(x);
5 y := x * x;
6 write(y)
7 end
Failure: x = 3 means y =9 àFailure!
• This is a failure of the system since the correct output would be 6

Fault: The fault that causes the failure is in line 5. The * operator is
used instead of +.

Error: The error that conduces to this fault may be:


• a typing error (the developer has written * instead of +)
• a conceptual error (e.g., the developer doesn't know how to
double a number)
Another Example
Fault: Should start
searching at 0, not 1

public static int numZero (int [ ] arr)


Test 1
{ // Effects: If arr is null throw NullPointerException [ 2, 7, 0 ]
// else return the number of occurrences of 0 in arr Expected: 1
int count = 0; Actual: 1
for (int i = 1; i < arr.length; i++)
{ Error: i is 1, not 0, on Test 2
if (arr [ i ] == 0) the first iteration [ 0, 2, 7 ]
{ Failure: none Expected: 1
count++; Actual: 0
}
} Error: i is 1, not 0
return count; Error propagates to the variable count
} Failure: count is 0 at the return statement
Specification
“if you can’t say it, you can’t do it”

• You have to know what your product is before


you can say if it has a bug.
• A specification defines the product being
created and includes:
– Functional requirements that describes the
features the product will support. E.g., on a word
processor
• Save, print, check spelling, change font, …
– Non-functional requirements are constraints on
the product. E.g,
• Security, reliability, user friendliness, platform, …
A software bug occurs when at
least one of these rules is true
• The software does not do something that the
specification says it should do.
• The software does something that the
specification says it should not do.
• The software does something that the
specification does not mention.
• The software does not do something that the
product specification does not mention but
should.
• The software is difficult to understand, hard to
use, slow …
Most bugs are not because of
mistakes in the code …

• Specification (~= 55%)


• Design (~= 25%)
• Code (~= 15%)
• Other (~= 5%)
Relative cost of bugs
“bugs found later cost more to fix”

• Cost to fix a bug increases exponentially (10x)


– i.e., it increases tenfold as time increases
• E.g., a bug found during specification costs $1 to
fix.
• … if found in design cost is $10
• … if found in code cost is $100
• … if found in released software cost is $1000
Bug Free Software
• Software is in the news for the wrong reason
– Security breach, Mars Lander lost, hackers getting
credit card information, etc.
• Why can’t software engineers develop software
that just works?
– As software gets more features and supports more
platforms it becomes increasingly difficult to make it
create bug-free.
Discussion …
• Do you think bug free software is
unattainable?
– Are their technical barriers that make this
impossible?
– Is it just a question of time before we can do
this?

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