Sir Syed University of Engineering & Technology, Karachi
CS-470
Software Quality Assurance & Testing
Week 10
Session 1
Batch - 2017 Department of Computer Science 1
Structure based (White box) testing
• Structure-based techniques serve two purposes:
– test coverage measurement
– and structural test case design.
• They are often used first to assess the amount of testing performed by tests
derived from specification-based techniques, i.e. to assess coverage.
• They are then used to design additional tests with the aim of increasing the test
coverage.
• Structure-based test design techniques are a good way of generating additional
test cases that are different from existing tests.
• They can help ensure more breadth of testing, in the sense that test cases that
achieve 100% coverage in any measure will be exercising all parts of the software
from the point of view of the items being covered.
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Test Coverage
• Test coverage measures in some specific way the amount of testing performed by a
set of tests (derived in some other way, e.g. using specification-based techniques).
• Wherever we can count things and can tell whether or not each of those things
has been tested by some test, then we can measure coverage.
• The basic coverage measure is :
• where the 'coverage item' is whatever we have been able to count and see
whether a test has exercised or used this item.
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… Test Coverage
• There is danger in using a coverage measure.
• 100% coverage does not mean 100% tested!
• Coverage techniques measure only one dimension of a multidimensional concept.
• Two different test cases may achieve exactly the same coverage but the input data
of one may find an error that the input data of the other doesn't.
• One drawback of code coverage measurement is that it measures coverage of
what has been written, i.e. the code itself; it cannot say anything about the
software that has not been written.
• If a specified function has not been implemented, specification-based testing
techniques will reveal this.
• If a function was omitted from the specification, then experience-based
techniques may find it.
• But structure-based techniques can only look at a structure which is already there.
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Statement coverage and statement testing
• Statement coverage is calculated by:
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Statement coverage and statement testing – Example 1
• Consider code:
• To achieve 100% statement coverage of this code segment just one test case is
required, one which ensures that variable A contains a value that is greater than
the value of variable B, for example, A = 12 and B = 10.
• Note that here we are doing structural test design first, since we are choosing our
input values in order ensure statement coverage.
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Statement coverage and statement testing – Example 2
• Consider code:
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Decision coverage and decision testing
• A decision is an IF statement, a loop control statement (e.g. DO-WHILE or REPEAT-
UNTIL), or a CASE statement, where there are two or more possible exits or
outcomes from the statement.
• With an IF statement, the exit can either be TRUE or FALSE, depending on the
value of the logical condition that comes after IF.
• With a loop control statement, the outcome is either to perform the code within
the loop or not - again a True or False exit. Decision coverage is calculated by:
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Decision coverage and decision testing – Example 1
• Consider code:
• Let's suppose that we already have the following test, which gives us 100%
statement coverage for code sample
– A = 20, B = 15
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…Decision coverage and decision testing – Example 1
• Which decision outcomes have we exercised with our test?
• The value of C is -10, so the condition 'C < 0' is True, so we will print 'C negative'
and we have exercised the True outcome from that decision statement.
• But we have not exercised the decision outcome of False.
• What other test would we need to exercise the False outcome and to achieve
100% decision coverage?
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…Decision coverage and decision testing – Example 1
• Before we answer that question, let's have a look at
another way to represent this code. Sometimes the
decision structure is easier to see in a control flow
diagram.
• The dotted line clearly shows that we haven't yet had a
test that takes the False exit from the IF statement.
• Let's modify our existing test set by adding another
test:
1. A = 20, B = 15
2. A = 10, B = 2
• This now covers both of the decision outcomes, True
and False.
• If we were to draw the path taken by Test 2, it would
be a straight line from the read statement down the
False exit and through the ENDIF.
• Note that we could have chosen other numbers to
achieve either the True or False outcomes.
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