Using Snapshot to Implement Hierarchy of Criteria

Software conformance testing is usually carried out by running the tested program over a set of input patterns and comparing the results with those predicted by its specifications. To date, there has been no cost-efficient way to build a test set capable of exposing all program errors for a typical industrial application. In program coverage, the huge program input is partitioned into classes, such that testing a single representative of each is deemed adequate. A gap exists between the practical, commercially available coverage criteria (such as statement and branch) and the stronger, theoretical criteria (e.g., path), whose implementation requires virtually infinite resources. In this paper we introduce snapshot to demonstrate how the testing effort can be scaled to bridge this gap. We define a hierarchy of coverage criteria (from statement to simple path), which can also be generalized to create parallel criteria. We suggest practical algorithms for implementation of each, based on the snapshot approach.