Software Testing Methodologies Course Page

R07 Regulation - Dept. of CSE & IT

Aditya Engineering College

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UNIT I - INTRODUCTION
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BRIEF OVERVIEW

UNIT I INTRODUCTION:
Purpose of Testing
Dichotomies This unit gives a brief introduction to testing, the need for testing, types of bugs and their
Model for Testing
Consequences of Bugs
consequences.
Taxonomy of Bugs
Summary At the end of this unit, the student will be able to:
UNIT II

Basics of Path Testing

Understand the importance of testing and debugging.
Predicates, Path Predicates
and Achievable Paths
Interpret a model for testing and understand the process of testing.
Path Sensitizing
Path Instrumentation
Discuss the limitations of testing.
Application of Path Testing Identify the consequences and understand the importance of bugs.
Summary
Classify the bugs into different categories.
UNIT III

Transaction Flows
Transaction Flow Testing
Techniques PURPOSE OF TESTING:
Implementation
Basics of Data Flow Testing
Strategies in Data Flow
Testing
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Application of Data Flow
Testing
Summary Testing consumes atleast half of the time and work required to produce a functional
UNIT IV program.
Domains and Paths MYTH: Good programmers write code without bugs. (Its wrong!!!)
Nice and Ugly domains
Domain Testing History says that even well written programs still have 1-3 bugs per hundred statements.
Domain and Interface Testing
Domains and Testability Productivity and Quality in software:
Summary In production of comsumer goods and other products, every manufacturing stage is
UNIT V subjected to quality control and testing from component to final stage.
Path products and Path If flaws are discovered at any stage, the product is either discarded or cycled back
expression
Reduction Procedure for rework and correction.
Applications
Regular Expressions and Flow Productivity is measured by the sum of the costs of the material, the rework, and the
Anomaly Detection
Summary
discarded componenets, and the cost of quality assurance and testing.
UNIT VI
There is a trade off between quality assurance costs and manufacturing costs: If
Logic Based Testing
sufficient time is not spent in quality assurance, the reject rate will be high and so
Decision Tables will be the net cost. If inspection is good and all errors are caught as they occur,
Path Expressions
KV Charts inspection costs will dominate, and again the net cost will suffer.
Specifications
Summary Testing and Quality assurance costs for 'manufactured' items can be as low as 2%
in consumer products or as high as 80% in products such as space-ships, nuclear
reactors, and aircrafts, where failures threaten life. Where as the manufacturing cost
of a software is trivial.
The biggest part of software cost is the cost of bugs: the cost of detecting them, the
cost of correcting them, the cost of designing tests that discover them, and the cost
of running those tests.
For software, quality and productivity are indistinguishable because the cost of a
software copy is trivial.
Testing and Test Design are parts of quality assurance should also focus on bug
prevention. A prevented bug is better than a detected and corrected bug.
Phases in a tester's mental life can be categorised into the following 5 phases:
1. Phase 0: (Until 1956: Debugging Oriented) There is no difference between testing
and debugging. Phase 0 thinking was the norm in early days of software
development till testing emerged as a discipline.
2. Phase 1: (1957-1978: Demonstration Oriented) The purpose of testing here is to
show that software works. Highlighted during the late 1970s. This failed because the
probability of showing that software works 'decreases' as testing increases. i.e. The
more you test, the more likely you'ill find a bug.
3. Phase 2: (1979-1982: Destruction Oriented) The purpose of testing is to show that
software doesnt work. This also failed because the software will never get released
as you will find one bug or the other. Also, a bug corrected may also lead to another
bug.
4. Phase 3: (1983-1987: Evaluation Oriented) The purpose of testing is not to prove
anything but to reduce the perceived risk of not working to an acceptable value
(Statistical Quality Control). Notion is that testing does improve the product to the
extent that testing catches bugs and to the extent that those bugs are fixed. The
product is released when the confidence on that product is high enough. (Note: This
is applied to large software products with millions of code and years of use.)
5. Phase 4: (1988-2000: Prevention Oriented) Testability is the factor considered
here. One reason is to reduce the labour of testing. Other reason is to check the
testable and non-testable code. Testable code has fewer bugs than the code that's
hard to test. Identifying the testing techniques to test the code is the main key here.
Test Design: We know that the software code must be designed and tested, but many
appear to be unaware that tests themselves must be designed and tested. Tests should be
properly designed and tested before applying it to the acutal code.
Testing is'nt everything: There are approaches other than testing to create better software.
Methods other than testing include:
1. Inspection Methods: Methods like walkthroughs, deskchecking, formal inspections
and code reading appear to be as effective as testing but the bugs caught donot
completely overlap.
2. Design Style: While designing the software itself, adopting stylistic objectives such
as testability, openness and clarity can do much to prevent bugs.
3. Static Analysis Methods: Includes formal analysis of source code during
compilation. In earlier days, it is a routine job of the programmer to do that. Now, the
compilers have taken over that job.
4. Languages: The source language can help reduce certain kinds of bugs.
Programmers find new bugs while using new languages.
5. Development Methodologies and Development Environment: The development
process and the environment in which that methodology is embedded can prevent
many kinds of bugs.

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DICHOTOMIES:

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Testing Versus Debugging: Many people consider both as same. Purpose of testing is to
show that a program has bugs. The purpose of testing is to find the error or misconception
that led to the program's failure and to design and implement the program changes that
correct the error.
Debugging usually follows testing, but they differ as to goals, methods and most important
psychology. The below tab le shows few important differences between testing and
debugging.

Testing Debugging
Testing starts with known conditions, Debugging starts from possibly unknown
uses predefined procedures and has intial conditions and the end can not be
predictable outcomes. predicted except statistically.
Testing can and should be planned, Procedure and duration of debugging cannot
designed and scheduled. be so constrained.
Testing is a demonstration of error or
Debugging is a deductive process.
apparent correctness.
Debugging is the programmer's vindication
Testing proves a programmer's failure.
(Justification).
Testing, as executes, should strive to
Debugging demands intutive leaps,
be predictable, dull, constrained, rigid
experimentation and freedom.
and inhuman.
Much testing can be done without Debugging is impossible without detailed
design knowledge. design knowledge.
Testing can often be done by an
Debugging must be done by an insider.
outsider.
Much of test execution and design can
Automated debugging is still a dream.
be automated.

Function Versus Structure: Tests can be designed from a functional or a structural point
of view. In functional testing, the program or system is treated as a blackbox. It is
subjected to inputs, and its outputs are verified for conformance to specified behaviour.
Functional testing takes the user point of view- bother about functionality and features and
not the program's implementation. Structural testing does look at the implementation
details. Things such as programming style, control method, source language, database
design, and coding details dominate structural testing.
Both Structural and functional tests are useful, both have limitations, and both target
different kinds of bugs. Functional tets can detect all bugs but would take infinite time to do
so. Structural tests are inherently finite but cannot detect all errors even if completely
executed.
Designer Versus Tester: Test designer is the person who designs the tests where as the
tester is the one actually tests the code. During functional testing, the designer and tester
are probably different persons. During unit testing, the tester and the programmer merge
into one person.
Tests designed and executed by the software designers are by nature biased towards
structural consideration and therefore suffer the limitations of structural testing.
Modularity Versus Efficiency: A module is a discrete, well-defined, small component of a
system. Smaller the modules, difficult to integrate; larger the modules, difficult to
understand. Both tests and systems can be modular. Testing can and should likewise be
organised into modular components. Small, independent test cases can be designed to
test independent modules.
Small Versus Large: Programming in large means constructing programs that consists of
many components written by many different programmers. Programming in the small is
what we do for ourselves in the privacy of our own offices. Qualitative and Quantitative
changes occur with size and so must testing methods and quality criteria.
Builder Versus Buyer: Most software is written and used by the same organization.
Unfortunately, this situation is dishonest because it clouds accountability. If there is no
separation between builder and buyer, there can be no accountability.
The different roles / users in a system include:
1. Builder: Who designs the system and is accountable to the buyer.
2. Buyer: Who pays for the system in the hope of profits from providing services.
3. User: Ultimate beneficiary or victim of the system. The user's interests are also
guarded by.
4. Tester: Who is dedicated to the builder's destruction.
5. Operator: Who has to live with the builders' mistakes, the buyers' murky (unclear)
specifications, testers' oversights and the users' complaints.

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MODEL FOR TESTING:

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Figure 1.1: A Model for Testing

Above figure is a model of testing process. It includes three models: A model of the
environment, a model of the program and a model of the expected bugs.

ENVIRONMENT:
A Program's environment is the hardware and software required to make it run. For
online systems, the environment may include communication lines, other systems,
terminals and operators.
The environment also includes all programs that interact with and are used to create
the program under test - such as OS, linkage editor, loader, compiler, utility routines.
Because the hardware and firmware are stable, it is not smart to blame the
environment for bugs.
PROGRAM:
Most programs are too complicated to understand in detail.
The concept of the program is to be simplified inorder to test it.
If simple model of the program doesnot explain the unexpected behaviour, we may
have to modify that model to include more facts and details. And if that fails, we may
have to modify the program.
BUGS:
Bugs are more insidious (deceiving but harmful) than ever we expect them to be.
An unexpected test result may lead us to change our notion of what a bug is and our
model of bugs.
Some optimistic notions that many programmers or testers have about bugs are
usually unable to test effectively and unable to justify the dirty tests most programs
need.
OPTIMISTIC NOTIONS ABOUT BUGS:
1. Benign Bug Hypothesis: The belief that bugs are nice, tame and logical.
(Benign: Not Dangerous)
2. Bug Locality Hypothesis: The belief that a bug discovered with in a
component effects only that component's behaviour.
3. Control Bug Dominance: The belief that errors in the control structures (if,
switch etc) of programs dominate the bugs.
4. Code / Data Separation: The belief that bugs respect the separation of code
and data.
5. Lingua Salvator Est: The belief that the language syntax and semantics (e.g.
Structured Coding, Strong typing, etc) eliminates most bugs.
6. Corrections Abide: The mistaken belief that a corrected bug remains
corrected.
7. Silver Bullets: The mistaken belief that X (Language, Design method,
representation, environment) grants immunity from bugs.
8. Sadism Suffices: The common belief (especially by independent tester) that
a sadistic streak, low cunning, and intuition are sufficient to eliminate most
bugs. Tough bugs need methodology and techniques.
9. Angelic Testers: The belief that testers are better at test design than
programmers are at code design.
TESTS:
Tests are formal procedures, Inputs must be prepared, Outcomes should predicted,
tests should be documented, commands need to be executed, and results are to be
observed. All these errors are subjected to error
We do three distinct kinds of testing on a typical software system. They are:
1. Unit / Component Testing: A Unit is the smallest testable piece of software
that can be compiled, assembled, linked, loaded etc. A unit is usually the work
of one programmer and consists of several hundred or fewer lines of code.
Unit Testing is the testing we do to show that the unit does not satisfy its
functional specification or that its implementation structure does not match the
intended design structure. A Component is an integrated aggregate of one or
more units. Component Testing is the testing we do to show that the
component does not satisfy its functional specification or that its
implementation structure does not match the intended design structure.
2. Integration Testing: Integration is the process by which components are
aggregated to create larger components. Integration Testing is testing done
to show that even though the componenets were individually satisfactory
(after passing component testing), checks the combination of components are
incorrect or inconsistent.
3. System Testing: A System is a big component. System Testing is aimed at
revealing bugs that cannot be attributed to components. It includes testing for
performance, security, accountability, configuration sensitivity, startup and
recovery.
Role of Models: The art of testing consists of creating , selecting, exploring, and revising
models. Our ability to go through this process depends on the number of different models
we have at hand and their ability to express a program's behaviour.
PLAYING POOL AND CONSULTING ORACLES
Testing is like playing a pool game. Either you hit the ball to any pocket (kiddie pool)
or you specify the pocket in advance (real pool). So is the testing. There is kiddie
testing and real testing. In kiddie testing, the observed outcome will be considered
as the expected outcome. In Real testing, the outcome is predicted and documented
before the test is run.
The tester who cannot make that kind of predictions does not understand the
program's functional objectives.
Oracles: An oracle is any program, process, or body of data that specifies the
expected outcome of a set of tests as applied to a tested object. Example of oracle :
Input/Outcome Oracle - an oracle that specifies the expected outcome for a
specified input.
Sources of Oracles: If every test designer had to analyze and predict the expected
behaviour for every test case for every component, then test design would be very
expensive. The hardest part of test design is predicting the expected outcome, but
we often have oracles that reduce the work. They are:
1. Kiddie Testing: run the test and see what comes out. If you have the
outcome in front of you, and especially if you have the values of the internal
variables, then it is much easier to validate that outcome by analysis and
show it to be correct than it is to predict what the outcome should be and
validate your prediction.
2. Regression Test Suites: Today's software development and testing are
dominated not by the design of new software but by rework and maintenance
of existing software. In such instances, most of the tests you need will have
been run on a previous versions. Most of those tests should have the same
outcome for the new version. Outcome prediction is therefore needed only for
changed parts of components.
3. Purchased Suits and Oracles: Highly standardized software that differ only
as to implementation often has commercially available test suites and oracles.
The most common examples are compilers for standard languages.
4. Existing Program: A working, trusted program is an excellent oracle. The
typical use is when the program is being rehosted to a new language,
operating system, environment, configuration with the intention that the
behavior should not change as a result of the rehosting.
IS COMPLETE TESTING POSSIBLE?
If the objective of the testing were to prove that a program is free of bugs, then
testing not only would be practically impossible, but also would be theoretically
impossible.
Three different approaches can be used to demonstrate that a program is
correct.They are:
1. Functional Testing:

Every program operates on a finite number of inputs. A complete

functional test would consists of subjecting the program to all possible
input streams.
For each input the routine either accepts the stream and produces a
correct outcome, accepts the stream and produces an incorrect
outcome, or rejects the stream and tells us that it did so.
For example, a 10 character input string has 280 possible input streams
and corresponding outcomes, so complete functional testing in this
sense is IMPRACTICAL.
But even theoritically, we can't execute a purely functional test this way
because we don't know the length of the string to which the system is
responding.
2. Structural Testing:

The design should have enough tests to ensure that every path through
the routine is exercised at least once. Right off that's is impossible
because some loops might never terminate.
The number of paths through a small routine can be awesome because
each loop multiplies the path count by the number of times through the
loop.
A small routine can have millions or billions of paths, so total Path
Testing is usually IMPRACTICAL.
3. Formal Proofs of Correctness:

Formal proofs of correctness rely on a combination of functional and

structural concepts.
Requirements are stated in a formal language (e.g. Mathematics) and
each program statement is examined and used in a step of an inductive
proof that the routine will produce the correct outcome for all possible
input sequences.
The IMPRACTICAL thing here is that such proofs are very expensive
and have been applied only to numerical routines or to formal proofs for
crucial software such as system’s security kernel or portions of
compilers.
Each approach leads to the conclusion that complete testing, in the sense of a proof
is neither theoretically nor practically possible.
THEORITICAL BARRIERS OF COMPLETE TESTING:
"We can never be sure that the specifications are correct"
"No verification system can verify every correct program"
"We can never be certain that a verification system is correct"
Not only all known approaches to absoulte demonstrations of correctness impractical, but
they are impossible. Therefore, our objective must shift from a absolute proof to a 'suitably
convincing' demonstration.

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CONSEQUENCES OF BUGS:

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IMPORTANCE OF BUGS: The importance of bugs depends on frequency, correction cost,

installation cost, and consequences.
1. Frequency: How often does that kind of bug occur? Pay more attention to the more
frequent bug types.
2. Correction Cost: What does it cost to correct the bug after it is found? The cost is
the sum of 2 factors: (1) the cost of discovery (2) the cost of correction. These costs
go up dramatically later in the development cycle when the bug is discovered.
Correction cost also depends on system size.
3. Installation Cost: Installation cost depends on the number of installations: small for
a single user program but more for distributed systems. Fixing one bug and
distributing the fix could exceed the entire system's development cost.
4. Consequences: What are the consequences of the bug? Bug consequences can
range from mild to catastrophic.

A reasonable metric for bug importance is

Importance= ($) = Frequence * (Correction cost + Installation cost +
Consequential cost)
CONSEQUENCES OF BUGS: The consequences of a bug can be measure in terms of
human rather than machine. Some consequences of a bug on a scale of one to ten are:
1. Mild: The symptoms of the bug offend us aesthetically (gently); a misspelled output
or a misaligned printout.
2. Moderate: Outputs are misleading or redundant. The bug impacts the system's
performance.
3. Annoying: The system's behaviour because of the bug is dehumanizing. E.g.
Names are truncated orarbitarily modified.
4. Disturbing: It refuses to handle legitimate (authorized / legal) transactions. The
ATM wont give you money. My credit card is declared invalid.
5. Serious: It loses track of its transactions. Not just the transaction itself but the fact
that the transaction occurred. Accountability is lost.
6. Very Serious: The bug causes the system to do the wrong transactions. Instead of
losing your paycheck, the system credits it to another account or converts deposits
to withdrawals.
7. Extreme: The problems aren't limited to a few users or to few transaction types.
They are frequent and arbitrary instead of sporadic infrequent) or for unusual cases.
8. Intolerable: Long term unrecoverable corruption of the database occurs and the
corruption is not easily discovered. Serious consideration is given to shutting the
system down.
9. Catastrophic: The decision to shut down is taken out of our hands because the
system fails.
10. Infectious: What can be worse than a failed system? One that corrupt other
systems even though it doesnot fall in itself ; that erodes the social physical
environment; that melts nuclear reactors and starts war.
FLEXIBLE SEVERITY RATHER THAN ABSOLUTES:
Quality can be measured as a combination of factors, of which number of bugs and
their severity is only one component.
Many organizations have designed and used satisfactory, quantitative, quality
metrics.
Because bugs and their symptoms play a significant role in such metrics, as testing
progresses, you see the quality rise to a reasonable value which is deemed to be
safe to ship the product.
The factors involved in bug severity are:
1. Correction Cost: Not so important because catastrophic bugs may be
corrected easier and small bugs may take major time to debug.
2. Context and Application Dependency: Severity depends on the context and
the application in which it is used.
3. Creating Culture Dependency: Whats important depends on the creators of
software and their cultural aspirations. Test tool vendors are more sensitive
about bugs in their software then games software vendors.
4. User Culture Dependency: Severity also depends on user culture. Naive
users of PC software go crazy over bugs where as pros (experts) may just
ignore.
5. The software development phase: Severity depends on development
phase. Any bugs gets more severe as it gets closer to field use and more
severe the longer it has been around.

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TAXONOMY OF BUGS:

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There is no universally correct way categorize bugs. The taxonomy is not rigid.
A given bug can be put into one or another category depending on its history and the
programmer's state of mind.
The major categories are: (1) Requirements, Features and Functionality Bugs (2)
Structural Bugs (3) Data Bugs (4) Coding Bugs (5) Interface, Integration and System Bugs
(6) Test and Test Design Bugs.

REQUIREMENTS, FEATURES AND FUNCTIONALITY BUGS: Various categories

in Requirements, Features and Functionlity bugs include:
1. Requirements and Specifications Bugs:

Requirements and specifications developed from them can be

incomplete ambiguous, or self-contradictory. They can be
misunderstood or impossible to understand.
The specifications that don't have flaws in them may change while the
design is in progress. The features are added, modified and deleted.
Requirements, especially, as expressed in specifications are a major
source of expensive bugs.
The range is from a few percentage to more than 50%, depending on
the application and environment.
What hurts most about the bugs is that they are the earliest to invade
the system and the last to leave.
2. Feature Bugs:

Specification problems usually create corresponding feature problems.

A feature can be wrong, missing, or superfluous (serving no useful
purpose). A missing feature or case is easier to detect and correct. A
wrong feature could have deep design implications.
Removing the features might complicate the software, consume more
resources, and foster more bugs.
3. Feature Interaction Bugs:

Providing correct, clear, implementable and testable feature

specifications is not enough.
Features usually come in groups or related features. The features of
each group and the interaction of features with in the group are usually
well tested.
The problem is unpredictable interactions between feature groups or
even between individual features. For example, your telephone is
provided with call holding and call forwarding. The interactions between
these two features may have bugs.
Every application has its peculiar set of features and a much bigger set
of unspecified feature interaction potentials and therefore result in
feature interaction bugs.
Specification and Feature Bug Remedies:
Most feature bugs are rooted in human to human communication problems.
One solution is to use high-level, formal specification languages or systems.
Such languages and systems provide short term support but in the long run,
does not solve the problem.
Short term Support: Specification languages facilitate formalization of
requirements and inconsistency and ambiguity analysis.
Long term Support: Assume that we have a great specification language
and that can be used to create unambiguous, complete specifications with
unambiguous complete testsand consistent test criteria.
The specification problem has been shifted to a higher level but not
eliminated.
Testing Techniques for functional bugs: Most functional test techniques- that is
those techniques which are based on a behavioral description of software, such as
transaction flow testing, syntax testing, domain testing, logic testing and state testing
are useful in testing functional bugs.

STRUCTURAL BUGS: Various categories in Structural bugs include:

1. Control and Sequence Bugs:

Control and sequence bugs include paths left out, unreachable code,
improper nesting of loops, loop-back or loop termination criteria
incorrect, missing process steps, duplicated processing, unnecessary
processing, rampaging, GOTO's, ill-conceived (not properly planned)
switches, sphagetti code, and worst of all, pachinko code.
One reason for control flow bugs is that this area is amenable
(supportive) to theoritical treatment.
Most of the control flow bugs are easily tested and caught in unit
testing.
Another reason for control flow bugs is that use of old code especially
ALP & COBOL code are dominated by control flow bugs.
Control and sequence bugs at all levels are caught by testing,
especially structural testing, more specifically path testing combined
with a bottom line functional test based on a specification.
2. Logic Bugs:

Bugs in logic, especially those related to misundertanding how case

statements and logic operators behave singly and combinations
Also includes evaluation of boolean expressions in deeply nested IF-
THEN-ELSE constructs.
If the bugs are parts of logical (i.e. boolean) processing not related to
control flow, they are characterized as processing bugs.
If the bugs are parts of a logical expression (i.e control-flow statement)
which is used to direct the control flow, then they are categorized as
control-flow bugs.
3. Processing Bugs:

Processing bugs include arithmetic bugs, algebraic, mathematical

function evaluation, algorithm selection and general processing.
Examples of Processing bugs include: Incorrect conversion from one
data representation to other, ignoring overflow, improper use of grater-
than-or-eual etc
Although these bugs are frequent (12%), they tend to be caught in good
unit testing.
4. Initialization Bugs:

Initialization bugs are common. Initialization bugs can be improper and

superfluous.
Superfluous bugs are generally less harmful but can affect
performance.
Typical initialization bugs include: Forgetting to initialize the variables
before first use, assuming that they are initialized elsewhere, initializing
to the wrong format, representation or type etc
Explicit declaration of all variables, as in Pascal, can reduce some
initialization problems.
5. Data-Flow Bugs and Anomalies:

Most initialization bugs are special case of data flow anamolies.

A data flow anomaly occurs where there is a path along which we
expect to do something unreasonable with data, such as using an
uninitialized variable, attempting to use a variable before it exists,
modifying and then not storing or using the result, or initializing twice
without an intermediate use.

DATA BUGS:
Data bugs include all bugs that arise from the specification of data objects,
their formats, the number of such objects, and their initial values.
Data Bugs are atleast as common as bugs in code, but they are foten treated
as if they didnot exist at all.
Code migrates data: Software is evolving towards programs in which more
and more of the control and processing functions are stored in tables.
Because of this, there is an increasing awareness that bugs in code are only
half the battle and the data problems should be given equal attention.
Dynamic Data Vs Static data: