Test conditions for fault classes in Boolean specifications

Abstract

Fault-based testing of software checks the software implementation for a set of faults. Two previous papers on fault-based testing [Kuhn 1999; Tsuchiya and Kikuno 2002] represent the required behavior of the software as a Boolean specification represented in Disjunctive Normal Form (DNF) and then show that faults may be organized in a hierarchy. This article extends these results by identifying necessary and sufficient conditions for fault-based testing. Unlike previous solutions, the formal analysis used to derive these conditions imposes no restrictions (such as DNF) on the form of the Boolean specification.