An analytical comparison of the fault-detecting ability of data flow testing techniques

Compares several data flow based software testing criteria to one another and to branch testing. The fact that criterion C/sub 1/ subsumes criterion C/sub 2/, does not guarantee that C/sub 1/ is better at detecting faults than C/sub 2/. However, if a certain stronger relation between the criteria holds, then for any program and any specification, C/sub 1/ is guaranteed to be better at detecting faults than C/sub 2/ in the following sense: a test suite selected by independent random selection of one test case from each C/sub 1/ subdomain is at least as likely to detect a fault as a suite similarly selected using C/sub 2/. It is shown that under those conditions, the expected number of failure-causing inputs in the C/sub 1/ test suite. These results are used to compare a number of data flow testing criteria to one another and to branch testing.<<ETX>>