Reinforced Condition/Decision Coverage (RC/DC): A New Criterion for Software Testing

Abstract

Abstract.A new Reinforced Condition/Decision Coverage (RC/DC) criterion for software testing is proposed. This criterion provides further development of the well-known Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC) criterion and is more suitable for testing of safety-critical software. Formal definitions in the Z notation for RC/DC, as well as MC/DC, are presented. Specific examples of using of these criteria are considered and some features are formally proved.

Test Data Variance as a Test Quality Measure: Exemplified for TTCN-3

“…The same author introduces in [8] a theoretical model for the notion of adequacy in the context of test effectiveness. Many other test adequacy criteria are defined in the literature [9] such as the well-known control-flow criteria, but also more complicated ones such as the Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC) or Reinforced Condition/Decision Coverage (RC/DC) criteria introduced by Kapoor [10].…”

Experimental evaluation of the tolerance for control‐flow test criteria

“…• To evaluate a new testing criterion, Reinforced Condition/Decision Coverage (RC/DC), proposed recently as a potential improvement on the MC/DC criterion [28].…”

“…The shortcoming of this approach is that it does not check for the situation where a change in condition should keep the value of decision. To improve on this, a new criterion called Reinforced Condition/Decision Coverage (RC/DC) has been proposed in [28]. In addition to MC/DC, RC/DC requires all the decisions to independently keep the value of decision remain the same at both T and F.…”

“…It is invalid to compare a test criterion, C 1 , that gives large test-sets with another criterion, C 2 , that selects small test-sets, as it is impossible to tell whether any reported benefit of C 1 is due to its inherent properties or due to the fact that the test-sets considered are larger and hence more likely to detect faults. Another newly proposed test criterion, RC/DC [28], was also analysed and compared with the above mentioned criteria. The number of test-cases in an RC/DC test-set could vary from (n + 1) to 6n, where n is the number of conditions in the Boolean decision.…”

“…Four industrially used control-flow testing criteria, Condition Coverage (CC), Decision Condition Coverage (DCC), Full Predicate Coverage (FPC) and Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC) have been analysed against four types of faults. A new test criteria, Reinforced Condition/Decision Coverage (RC/DC) [28], is also analysed and compared. The Boolean specifications considered were taken from a past research paper and also generated randomly.…”