Model-Based Test-Suite Minimization using Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC)

Testing is very expensive for high-assurance software, like commercial aircraft systems, weapon research, weather forecast, earthquake forecast, and software used for safety critical system. A small and simple flaw in the end product can be enough for destroying the entire effort of the developer with a huge unrecoverable damage to the society. For this reason, Federal Aviation Administration’s requirement is that, the testsuites should be comprises of Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC) adequate. By using logic coverage criteria lots of flaws can be removed for safety critical software. MC/DC was proposed by NASA, and had been widely accepted in the field of testing. MC/DC is an effective verification technique, and helps to uncover safety faults. It is a challenge to minimize the number of test-suites when there is a partial change in the software. This can be achieved by using models. Unified Modeling Language (UML) not only helps to design software but also plays a vital role in detecting the faults early phase of design and in minimizing the test-suite. Existing test-suite minimization techniques investigated by different researchers may not be effective in minimizing MC/DC-adequate test-suites because they do not consider the complexity of the present software. A new approach for test-suite minimization is presented in this work, using dissimilarity matrix, which can be well fitted with MC/DC. We also present the results generated out of a case study of the test-suite minimization.