Combinatorial and MC/DC Coverage Levels of Random Testing

Published

August 18, 2017

Author(s)

Sergiy Vilkomir, Aparna Alluri, D. Richard Kuhn, Raghu N. Kacker

Abstract

Software testing criteria differ in effectiveness, numbers of required test cases, and processes of test generation. Specific criteria are often compared with random testing as the simplest basic approach and, in some cases, random testing shows a surprisingly high level of effectiveness. One of the reasons is that any random test set has a specific level of coverage according to any coverage criterion. Numerical evaluation of coverage levels of random testing according to various coverage criteria is an interesting research task and important for understanding the relationship between different testing approaches. In this paper, we experimentally evaluate the coverage levels of random testing for two criteria: MC/DC and combinatorial t-way testing. The results could be used for selecting optimal methods for practical testing and for developing new testing methods based on integrating existing approaches.

Conference Dates

July 25-29, 2017

Conference Location

Prague, CZ

Conference Title

IEEE International Conference on Software Quality Reliability and Security

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/QRS-C.2017.19

Local Download

Keywords

random testing, combinatorial testing, MC/DC, pairwise, coverage

Citation

Vilkomir, S. , Alluri, A. , Kuhn, D. and Kacker, R. (2017), Combinatorial and MC/DC Coverage Levels of Random Testing, IEEE International Conference on Software Quality Reliability and Security, Prague, CZ, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/QRS-C.2017.19, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=921959 (Accessed October 20, 2025)