C0 COVERAGE-MEASURE AND TESTING-DOMAIN METRICS BASED ON A SOFTWARE RELIABILITY GROWTH MODEL

Abstract

Generally, a software development manager is performing the testing-progress management by using various CASE tools. These CASE tools support testing activities of Windows applications or embedded software systems. Then, by using various testing coverage-measures, the testing-progress management can be recognized visually. However, in the system-testing phase, it is impossible to measure them of software systems which have been becoming large-scale and complicated recently. Therefore, the manager has to determine the testing termination time in consideration of the convergence situation of the cumulative number of detected faults and the prespecified delivery time to the users. These determination method have ambiguity based on the manager's experience or intuition. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the testing-domain rate derived from a testing-domain dependent software reliability growth model and the testing-path coverage. Then, we show that the testing-domain rate, which is defined as the increasing ratio of the testing-paths in the modules and functions in the software system to be influenced by executed test-cases, is useful as an alternative measure of testing-coverage metrics. Further, this model is applied to the fault data observed in an actual software project, and the comparisons of goodness-of-fit with the conventional software reliability growth models are performed. Finally, in numerical illustrations, we discuss the software reliability analysis and the usefulness of the testing-domain rate, and propose a new testing-path coverage rate.