Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Software Fault Complexity and Implications for Software Testing

Published

Author(s)

D. Richard Kuhn, D Wallace, A M. Gallo

Abstract

Exhaustive testing of computer software is intractable, but empirical studies of software failures suggest that testing can in some cases be effectively exhaustive. Data reported in this study and others show that software failures in a variety of domains were caused by combinations of relatively few conditions. These results have important implications for testing. If all faults in a system can be triggered by a combination of n or fewer parameters, then testing all n-tuples of parameters is effectively equivalent to exhaustive testing for variables with a small set of discrete values.
Citation
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Volume
30
Issue
6

Keywords

combinatorial testing, fault complexity, software assurance, software quality assurance, software testing

Citation

Kuhn, D. , Wallace, D. and Gallo, A. (2004), Software Fault Complexity and Implications for Software Testing, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2004.24 (Accessed October 8, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created June 15, 2004, Updated October 12, 2021