Theoretical and Empirical Studies of Program Testing
- 1 July 1978
- journal article
- Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
- Vol. SE-4 (4) , 293-298
- https://doi.org/10.1109/tse.1978.231514
Abstract
Two approaches to the study of program testing are described. One approach is theoretical and the other empirical. In the theoretical approach situations are characterized in which it is possible to use testing to formally prove the correctness of programs or the correctness of properties of programs. In the empirical approach statistics are collected which record the frequency with which different testing strategies reveal the errors in a collection of programs. A summary of the results of two research projects which investigated these approaches are presented. The differences between the two approaches are discussed and their relative advantages and disadvantages are compared.Keywords
This publication has 16 references indexed in Scilit:
- Lindenmayer grammars and symbolic testingInformation Processing Letters, 1978
- Symbolic Testing and the DISSECT Symbolic Evaluation SystemIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 1977
- On the Automated Generation of Program Test DataIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 1976
- Reliability of the Path Analysis Testing StrategyIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 1976
- A System to Generate Test Data and Symbolically Execute ProgramsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 1976
- Symbolic execution and program testingCommunications of the ACM, 1976
- An Approach to Program TestingACM Computing Surveys, 1975
- Methodology for the Generation of Program Test DataIEEE Transactions on Computers, 1975
- Testing large software with automated software evaluation systemsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 1975
- SELECT---a formal system for testing and debugging programs by symbolic executionPublished by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) ,1975