Evaluating the Effectiveness of BEN in Locating Different Types of Software Fault

Published

August 4, 2016

Author(s)

Raghu N. Kacker, David R. Kuhn, Jagan Chandrasekaran, Yu Lei

Abstract

Debugging or fault localization is one of the most challenging tasks during software development. Automated fault localization tools have been developed to reduce the amount of effort and time software developers have to spend on debugging. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of a fault localization tool called BEN in locating different types of software fault. Assuming that combinatorial testing has been performed on the subject program, BEN leverages the result obtained from combinatorial testing to perform fault localization. Our evaluation focuses on impact of three properties of software fault on the effectiveness of BEN. The three properties include accessibility, input value sensitivity and control flow sensitivity. The experimental results suggest that BEN is very effective for locating faults of low accessibility in the subject programs. Furthermore, BEN is more effective for locating input value-insensitive (or control flow-insensitive) faults than input value-sensitive (or control flow-sensitive) faults in the subject programs.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of
Eighth IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation
ICST 2016

Conference Dates

April 10-15, 2016

Conference Location

Chicago, IL

Conference Title

Eighth IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation
ICST 2016

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

DOI Link

Keywords

BEN, Combinatorial testing, Fault localization

Citation

Kacker, R. , Kuhn, D. , Chandrasekaran, J. and , Y. (2016), Evaluating the Effectiveness of BEN in Locating Different Types of Software Fault, Proceedings of Eighth IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation ICST 2016, Chicago, IL, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSTW.2016.44 (Accessed October 27, 2025)