Software Engineering

Verification and Validation

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 1

Verification and Validation

Assuring that a software

system meets a user's needs

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 2

 Objectives
 To introduce software verification and validation
and to discuss the distinction between them
 To describe the program inspection process and
its role in V & V

To explain static analysis as a verification
technique
 To describe the Cleanroom software development
process

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 3

Verification vs validation
 Verification:
"Are we building the product right"
 The software should conform to its specification

 Validation:
"Are we building the right product"

The software should do what the user really
requires

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 4

The V & V process
 As a whole life-cycle process - V & V must be
applied at each stage in the software process.
 Has two principal objectives
• The discovery of defects in a system
• The assessment of whether or not the system is usable in
an operational situation.

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 5

Static and dynamic verification
 Software inspections Concerned with analysis
of the static system representation to discover
problems (static verification)
• May be supplement by tool-based document and code analysis
 Software testing Concerned with exercising
and observing product behaviour
(dynamic verification)
• The system is executed with test data and its operational
behaviour is observed

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 6

Static and dynamic V&V
Static
verification

Requirements High-level Formal Detailed

specification Program
specification design design

Dynamic
Prototype
validation

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 7

Program testing
 Can reveal the presence of errors NOT their
absence !!!
 A successful test is a test which discovers one
or more errors

The only validation technique for non-functional
requirements
 Should be used in conjunction with static
verification to provide full V&V coverage

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 8

Types of testing
 Defect testing
• Tests designed to discover system defects.
• A successful defect test is one which reveals the presence
of defects in a system.

 Statistical testing
• tests designed to reflect the frequency of user inputs. Used
for reliability estimation.

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 9

 V& V goals
Verification and validation should establish
confidence that the software is fit for purpose

 This does NOT mean completely free of defects

 Rather, it must be good enough for its intended

use and the type of use will determine the degree
of confidence that is needed

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 10

V & V confidence
Depends on system’s purpose, user
expectations and marketing environment
• Software function
» The level of confidence depends on how critical the software is to
an organisation
• User expectations
» Users may have low expectations of certain kinds of software.
» Now it is less acceptable to deliver unreliable systems, so software
companies must devote more effort to V&V!
• Marketing environment
» Getting a product to market early may be more important than
finding defects in the program

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 11

 Testing and debugging
Defect testing and debugging are distinct processes

(!) Verification and validation is concerned with
establishing the existence of defects in a program
Debugging is concerned with
- locating and
- repairing these errors

(!!) Debugging involves
• formulating a hypothesis about program behaviour
• then testing these hypotheses to find the system error

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 12

The debugging process

Test Test
results Specification
cases

Locate Design Repair Re-test

error error repair error program

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 13

V & V planning
 Careful planning is required to get the most
out of testing and inspection processes
 Planning should start early in the development
process

The plan should identify the balance between
static verification and testing
 Test planning is about defining standards for the
testing process rather than describing product
tests

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 14

The V-model of development

Requir ements System System Detailed

specification specification design design

System Sub-system Module and

Acceptance
integration integration unit code
test plan
test plan test plan and tess

Acceptance System Sub-system

Service
test integration test integration test

This diagram shows how test plans should be derived from the
system specification and design.
Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 15
 The structure of a software test plan

The testing process (a description of the major phases)

Requirements traceability (a part of the user)

Tested items

Testing schedule

Test recording procedures (it is not enough simply to run
tests )

Hardware and software requirements

Constraints

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 16

 Software inspections
 Involve people examining the source
representation with the aim of discovering
anomalies and defects

Do not require execution of a system so may be
used before implementation
 May be applied to any representation of the
system (requirements, design, test data, etc.)
 Very effective technique for discovering errors

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 17

Inspection success
 Many different defects may be discovered in
a single inspection. In testing, one defect, may
mask another so several executions are required

The reuse domain and programming knowledge
so reviewers are likely to have seen the types of
error that commonly arise

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 18

Inspections and testing
 Inspections and testing are complementary
and not opposing verification techniques
 Both should be used during the V & V process

 Inspections can check conformance with a

specification but not conformance with the
customer’s real requirements
 Also inspections cannot check non-functional
characteristics such as performance, usability,
etc.

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 19

Program inspections – are reviews
whose objective is program defect detection.

 Formalised approach to document reviews

 Intended explicitly for defect DETECTION (not
correction)
 Defects may be logical errors, anomalies in the
code that might indicate an erroneous condition
(e.g. an uninitialised variable) or non-compliance
with standards

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 20

Inspection pre-conditions

A precise specification must be available

Team members must be familiar with the
organisation standards

Syntactically correct code must be available

An error checklist should be prepared

Management must accept that inspection will
increase costs early in the software process

Management must not use inspections for
staff appraisal

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 21

The inspection process

Planning
Overview Follow-up
Individual
Rework
preparation
Inspection
meeting

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 22

Inspection procedure
 System overview presented to inspection team
 Code and associated documents are
distributed to inspection team in advance
 Inspection takes place and discovered errors
are noted
 Modifications are made to repair discovered
errors

Re-inspection may or may not be required

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 23

Inspection teams
 Made up of at least 4 members
 Author of the code being inspected
 Inspector who finds errors, omissions and
inconsistencies
 Reader who reads the code to the team
 Moderator who chairs the meeting and notes
discovered errors

Other roles are Scribe and Chief moderator

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 24

Inspection checklists
 Checklist of common errors should be used to
drive the inspection
 Error checklist is programming language
dependent
 The 'weaker' the type checking, the larger the
checklist
 Examples:
• Initialisation,
• Constant naming,
• loop termination,
• array bounds, etc.

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 25

Fault class Inspection check
Data faults Are all program variables initialised before their values
are used?
Have all constants been named?
Should the lower bound of arrays be 0, 1, or something
else?
Should the upper bound of arrays be equal to the size of
the array or Size -1?
If character strings are used, is a delimiter explicitly
assigned?
Control faults For each conditional statement, is the condition correct?
Is each loop certain to terminate?
Are compound statements correctly bracketed?
In case statements, are all possible cases accounted for?
Input/output faults Are all input variables used?
Are all output variables assigned a value before they are
output?
Interface faults Do all function and procedure calls have the correct
number of parameters?
Do formal and actual parameter types match?
Are the parameters in the right order?
If components access shared memory, do they have the
same model of the shared memory structure?
Storage management If a linked structure is modified, have all links been
faults correctly reassigned?
If dynamic storage is used, has space been allocated
correctly?
Is space explicitly de-allocated after it is no longer
required?
Exception Have all possible error conditions been taken into Inspection checks
management faults account?
Inspection rate
 500 statements/hour during overview
 125 source statement/hour during individual
preparation
 90-125 statements/hour can be inspected
 Inspection is therefore an expensive process
 Inspecting 500 lines costs about 40 man/hours
effort = £2800

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 27

Automated static analysis
 Static analysers are software tools for source
text processing
 They parse the program text and try to discover
potentially erroneous conditions and bring these
to the attention of the V & V team
 Very effective as an aid to inspections. A
supplement to but not a replacement for
inspections

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 28

Static analysis checks
Fault class Static analysis check
Data faults Variables used before initialisation
Variables declared but never used
Variables assigned twice but never used
between assignments
Possible array bound violations
Undeclared variables
Control faults Unreachable code
Unconditional branches into loops
Input/output faults Variables output twice with no intervening
assignment
Interface faults Parameter type mismatches
Parameter number mismatches
Non-usage of the results of functions
Uncalled functions and procedures
Storage management Unassigned pointers
faults Pointer arithmetic

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 29

Stages of static analysis
 Control flow analysis. Checks for loops with
multiple exit or entry points, finds unreachable
code, etc.
 Data use analysis. Detects uninitialised
variables, variables written twice without an
intervening assignment, variables which are
declared but never used, etc.
 Interface analysis. Checks the consistency of
routine and procedure declarations and their
use

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 30

Stages of static analysis
 Information flow analysis. Identifies the
dependencies of output variables. Does not
detect anomalies itself but highlights
information for code inspection or review

Path analysis. Identifies paths through the
program and sets out the statements
executed in that path. Again, potentially
useful in the review process
 Both these stages generate vast amounts of
information. Must be used with care.
Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 31
138% more lint_ex.c

#include <stdio.h>
printarray (Anarray)
int Anarray;
{
printf(“%d”,Anarray);
}
main ()
{
int Anarray[5]; int i; char c;
printarray (Anarray, i, c);
printarray (Anarray) ;
}

139% cc lint_ex.c
140% lint lint_ex.c

lint_ex.c(10): warning: c may be used before set

lint_ex.c(10): warning: i may be used before set
printarray: variable # of args. lint_ex.c(4) :: lint_ex.c(10)
printarray, arg. 1 used inconsistently lint_ex.c(4) ::
lint_ex.c(10)
printarray, arg. 1 used inconsistently lint_ex.c(4) ::
lint_ex.c(11)
printf returns value which is always ignored
LINT static analysis
Use of static analysis
 Particularly valuable when a language such as C
is used which has weak typing and hence many
errors are undetected by the compiler

Less cost-effective for languages like Java that
have strong type checking and can therefore
detect many errors during compilation

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 33

Cleanroom software development
 The name is derived from the 'Cleanroom'
process in semiconductor fabrication. The
philosophy is defect avoidance rather than
defect removal

Software development process based on:
• Incremental development
• Formal specification.
• Static verification using correctness arguments
• Statistical testing to determine program reliability.

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 34

The Cleanroom process

Formally Error rework

specify
system

Define Construct Formally

Integrate
software structured verify
increment
increments program code

Develop
operational Design Test
profile statistical integrated
tests system

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 35

Cleanroom process characteristics
 Formal specification using a state transition
model
 Incremental development
 Structured programming - limited control and
abstraction constructs are used
 Static verification using rigorous inspections

Statistical testing of the system

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 36

Incremental development

Frozen
specification

Establish Formal Develop s/w Deliver

rerquirements specification increment software

Requir ements change request

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 37

Formal specification and inspections
 The state based model is a system specification
and the inspection process checks the program
against this model

Programming approach is defined so that the
correspondence between the model and the
system is clear

Mathematical arguments (not proofs) are used to
increase confidence in the inspection process

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 38

Cleanroom process teams

Specification team. Responsible for developing
and maintaining the system specification

Development team. Responsible for
developing and verifying the software. The
software is NOT executed or even compiled
during this process

Certification team. Responsible for developing
a set of statistical tests to exercise the software
after development. Reliability growth models
used to determine when reliability is acceptable

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 39

Cleanroom process evaluation

Results in IBM have been very impressive with
few discovered faults in delivered systems

Independent assessment shows that the
process is no more expensive than other
approaches

Fewer errors than in a 'traditional' development
process

Not clear how this approach can be transferred
to an environment with less skilled or less
highly motivated engineers

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 40

Key points
 Verification and validation are not the same
thing. Verification shows conformance with
specification; validation shows that the program
meets the customer’s needs

Test plans should be drawn up to guide the
testing process.

Static verification techniques involve examination
and analysis of the program for error detection

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 41

Key points

Program inspections are very effective in discovering
errors

Program code in inspections is checked by a small
team to locate software faults

Static analysis tools can discover program anomalies
which may be an indication of faults in the code

The Cleanroom development process depends on
incremental development, static verification and
statistical testing

Software Engineering Verification and Validation Slide 42