EFFECT OF TEST SET MINIMIZATION ON FAULT-DETECTION EFFECTIVENESS

Given a test set T to test a program P, there are at least two attribu tes of 7 that determine its fault detection effectiveness. One attribu te is the size of T measured as the number of test eases in T. Another attribute is the code coverage measured when P is executed on all ele ments of T. The fault detection effectiveness of T is the ratio of the number of faults guaranteed to result in program failure when P is ex ecuted on T to the total number of faults present in P. An empirical s tudy was conducted to determine the relative importance of the size an d coverage attributes in affecting the fault detection effectiveness o f a randomly selected test set for some program P. Results from this s tudy indicate that as the size of a test set is reduced, while the cod e coverage is kept constant, there is little or no reduction in the fa ult detection effectiveness of the new test set so generated. For the study reported, of the two attributes mentioned above, the code covera ge attribute of a test set is more important than its size attribute. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.