A new software testing approach based on domain analysis of specifications and programs

Abstract

Partition testing is a well-known software testing technique. This paper shows that partition testing strategies are relatively ineffective in detecting faults related to small shifts in input domain boundary. We present an innovative software testing approach based on input domain analysis of specifications and programs, and propose the principle and procedure of boundary test case selection in functional domain and operational domain. The differences of the two domains are examined by analyzing the set of their boundary test cases. To automatically determine the operational domain of a program, the ADSOD system is prototyped. The system supports not only the determination of input domain of integer and real data types, but also non-numeric data types such as characters and enumerated types. It consists of several modules in finding illegal values of input variables with respect to specific expressions. We apply the new testing approach to some example studies. A preliminary evaluation on fault detection effectiveness and code coverage illustrates that the approach is highly effective in detecting faults due to small shifts in the input domain boundary, and is more economical in test case generation than the partition testing strategies.