CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE LABORATOIRE D'ANALYSE ET D'ARCHITECTURE DES SYSTÈMES An Input Domain-Based Reliability Growth Model and Its Applications in Comparing Software Testing Strategies

Existing input domain-based reliability models do not account for software reliability growth, because they do not consider fault corrections. This paper proposes an input domain-based reliability growth model with fault correction history being taken into account. Both partition and random testing can be used to generate input cases for test runs. It is generally considered in the model that input case generation, fault detection and fault correction can all be imperfect. As an application of the proposed input domain-based reliability growth model, the efficiency of random and partition testing in terms of reliability growth is studied and compared analytically. The impacts on the efficiency of testing strategies due to the number of faults in the program, the distribution of fault in the input domain of the program, as well as the imperfections of input case generation, fault detection and fault correction are studied. Through sophisticated analysis we obtain some new results which explain why and under which conditions random testing has the same efficiency as, a higher or lower efficiency than partition testing. As a further application of the proposed input domain-based reliability growth model, the efficiency of variants of partition testing are studied and compared.