Quantifying Faultiness: What Does It Mean to Have N Faults?

Besma Khaireddine, Ali Mili

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

It is common to see software testing experiments where a benchmark program is seeded with N benchmark mutations, then declared to have N faults. We argue that in the absence of a formal definition of what is a fault, let alone what are N faults, it is difficult to assign a meaning to such claims. We further argue that in order to assign a meaning to such a claim we must refer to five parameters, which we introduce and justify. To illustrate our ideas, we consider the tcas component of the Siemens benchmark, which we seed with eight mutations, and we find that not only is it wrong to claim that tcas has eight faults, it is also wrong to measure faultiness by the number of faults in a program.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2021 IEEE/ACM 9th International Conference on Formal Methods in Software Engineering, FormaliSE 2021
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages68-74
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)9781665439138
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2021
Event9th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Formal Methods in Software Engineering, FormaliSE 2021 - Virtual, Online, Spain
Duration: May 17 2021May 21 2021

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2021 IEEE/ACM 9th International Conference on Formal Methods in Software Engineering, FormaliSE 2021

Conference

Conference9th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Formal Methods in Software Engineering, FormaliSE 2021
Country/TerritorySpain
CityVirtual, Online
Period5/17/215/21/21

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Science Applications
  • Software

Keywords

  • fault density
  • fault depth
  • fault multiplicity
  • fault repair
  • faults

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Quantifying Faultiness: What Does It Mean to Have N Faults?'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this