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Software testing and evaluation
Software Testing and Evaluation
Although paxt II is dedicated to Defense Practices overview, a lot of interesting information can be found in it. Mainly in the chapters called "...Lessons leaxned ~ which are true for every kind of software development. Among the five appendices, the most interesting ones are:
De Millo, McCracken, Martin and Passafiume Addison-Wesley, 1987, Hardback, £32.95 537 pp ISBN: 0 805 325352 This book is divided into three main parts: • P a r t one: State-of-the-Art overview • P a r t two: Current Defense Practices overview • Appendices: Which can be considered as an independent paxt due to its own length. General concepts are presented at the beginning. Then software testing by itself is examined. Main testing strategies are discussed with emphasis on their advantages and disadvantages:
• The testing tools index where more than 200 catalogued tools axe indicated, more than 40 of them being more precisely described in ~Testing Tool d a t a sheets" • Comprehensive bibliography which completes the references lists which al~peax at the end of each chapter. Of course, this book does not give T H E way of testing software which is a hundred percent safe, but the information that can be found in it can help a great deal to choose a better way of testing or to update it to obtain safer results in less time.
A. Chaudouet-Miranda CETIM, France
• Black-box testing based solely on the specifications of the software •
White-box testing based on the program structure itself using well defined criteria such as statement coverage, branch coverage or condition coverage
• Top-Down testing which starts with the top module and then proceeds with lower level ones progressively •
Bottom-Up testing: the inverse of the above one
• Thread testing which is well suited to real-time system testing Testing techniques axe then described. Among the twelve techniques presented in this book, most of them can be applied to scientific software:
Wouldn't life be easy if all things were as simple as using BEASY.
• Static analysis technique that, without actually executing the code, seems to be effective in finding most of the logic design and coding errors • Symbolic testing which is equivalent to a large number of tests with actual d a t a but which seems difficult to apply on laxge programs
BEASY Analysis Model
• Program Instrumentation which will remind old programmers of the good early days of software development and younger ones the present debuggers
To find out more:
• Input Space Partitioning which is related to the path analysis and which is better fitted to programs with a sm~ll number of input variables • Functional Program Testing which is a design-based approach to program testing Finally, part I ends with Testing and Evaluation Tools. Static and Dynamics analysis tools and test supporting tools axe examined from a generic point-of- view. A list of specific tools with their main characteristics is given for each of these categories.
A FEM Analysis Model
Name
Organisation Address Tel: Return to Computational Mechanics BEASY, Ashurst Lodge, Ashurst, Southampton, SO4 2AA. Tel: 0703-293223; Fax:0703-292853. ~ - ~
/---/ / -
o
THE BOUNDARY ELEMENTANALYSIS SYSTEM ~
A d v . Enz. Software. 1990. Vol. 12. No. 3
151
Although paxt II is dedicated to Defense Practices overview, a lot of interesting information can be found in it. Mainly in the chapters called "...Lessons leaxned ~ which are true for every kind of software development. Among the five appendices, the most interesting ones are:
De Millo, McCracken, Martin and Passafiume Addison-Wesley, 1987, Hardback, £32.95 537 pp ISBN: 0 805 325352 This book is divided into three main parts: • P a r t one: State-of-the-Art overview • P a r t two: Current Defense Practices overview • Appendices: Which can be considered as an independent paxt due to its own length. General concepts are presented at the beginning. Then software testing by itself is examined. Main testing strategies are discussed with emphasis on their advantages and disadvantages:
• The testing tools index where more than 200 catalogued tools axe indicated, more than 40 of them being more precisely described in ~Testing Tool d a t a sheets" • Comprehensive bibliography which completes the references lists which al~peax at the end of each chapter. Of course, this book does not give T H E way of testing software which is a hundred percent safe, but the information that can be found in it can help a great deal to choose a better way of testing or to update it to obtain safer results in less time.
A. Chaudouet-Miranda CETIM, France
• Black-box testing based solely on the specifications of the software •
White-box testing based on the program structure itself using well defined criteria such as statement coverage, branch coverage or condition coverage
• Top-Down testing which starts with the top module and then proceeds with lower level ones progressively •
Bottom-Up testing: the inverse of the above one
• Thread testing which is well suited to real-time system testing Testing techniques axe then described. Among the twelve techniques presented in this book, most of them can be applied to scientific software:
Wouldn't life be easy if all things were as simple as using BEASY.
• Static analysis technique that, without actually executing the code, seems to be effective in finding most of the logic design and coding errors • Symbolic testing which is equivalent to a large number of tests with actual d a t a but which seems difficult to apply on laxge programs
BEASY Analysis Model
• Program Instrumentation which will remind old programmers of the good early days of software development and younger ones the present debuggers
To find out more:
• Input Space Partitioning which is related to the path analysis and which is better fitted to programs with a sm~ll number of input variables • Functional Program Testing which is a design-based approach to program testing Finally, part I ends with Testing and Evaluation Tools. Static and Dynamics analysis tools and test supporting tools axe examined from a generic point-of- view. A list of specific tools with their main characteristics is given for each of these categories.
A FEM Analysis Model
Name
Organisation Address Tel: Return to Computational Mechanics BEASY, Ashurst Lodge, Ashurst, Southampton, SO4 2AA. Tel: 0703-293223; Fax:0703-292853. ~ - ~
/---/ / -
o
THE BOUNDARY ELEMENTANALYSIS SYSTEM ~
A d v . Enz. Software. 1990. Vol. 12. No. 3
151