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Fault-Detection Sensitivity Based Assessment of Test Sets for Safety-Relevant Software

Authors:
Susanne Kandl
Jean-Marc Forey

Keywords: Dependable Systems, Testing, Fault-Detection Sensitivity, Safety-Relevant Software

Abstract:
In testing it is, in general, not possible (or at least extremely time-consuming) to cover the complete input data space, therefore usually a test set is selected for a given coverage criterion (like decision coverage or similar). This restricted test set covers only a part of the complete input data space with a degraded fault-detection capability. The fault-detection capability of a test set is given by the number of detected faults in relation to the number of actual faults. In this work, we present a novel approach for the assessment of test sets based on their fault-detection sensitivity. The main goal of an efficient testing process is to reduce the test effort while targeting a maximum number of detected faults, i.e., an ideal test set requires a minimal execution time for the test run (defined by the number of the test cases and their individual run-times) with a maximum fault-detection sensitivity. Therefore, our proposed test-set selection process is not guided by a coverage criterion, but by the fault-detection capability of the different test cases using the output of the tool Certitude Functional Qualification System. We will apply our strategy on a safety-relevant (regarding ISO 26262) case study from the automotive domain focusing on the scalability of the test-set selection strategy. Our work presents a novel method to optimize the testing effort for software used in dependable systems with respect to a decreased testing effort while sustaining a high fault-detection capability.

Pages: 5 to 9

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2014

Publication date: November 16, 2014

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4324

ISBN: 978-1-61208-378-0

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Dates: from November 16, 2014 to November 20, 2014