A Test Model for Software Development

The fulfillment of the quality and reliability requirements of complex software systems necessitate that the software undergo some specific verification and validation procedures [1]-[3]. An integral part of both activities is intensive testing. The importance of testing manifests itself especially in the case of safety-critical computer systems [3], where the primary criterion is safe operation. This paper presents a test model which involves a mapping scheme for describing the one-to-one correspondence between the input and output domains of a given software system. The test model incorporates both the verification and the validation schemes. The significance of the model is that it alleviates the clear differentiation between verification and validation tests, which is important and useful in the process of test design and evaluation. The second part of the paper examines the case when the software is designed by using formal specification [3]-[5]. Here the consequences and problems of formal methods, and their impacts on verification and validation are discussed