Software Debugging, Testing, and Verification

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Software Debugging, Testing, and Verification

• Presented by
• Chris Hundersmarck
• November 10, 2004
• Dr. Bis SE516

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Software Debugging, Testing, and Verification

• Published in
• IBM Systems Journal
• Armonk 2002 Vol. 41, Iss. 1 pg. 4-9

• Written by
• B Hailpern and P Santhanam

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A Problem

• Due to the informal nature of software
  development, the prevalent practices in the
  industry are still immature.
• Additionally, the tools that incorporate the more
  advanced aspects of this technology are not ready
  for large-scale commercial use.

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Why are there major responsibilities on the areas
of software debugging, testing, and verification?

• Complexity and scope of software has increased
• Advances in software engineering techniques has
  been only moderate at best.
• On average debugging, testing, and verification
  ranges from 50 to 75 of the total development
  cost

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• Additional reasons for major responsibilities on
  the areas of software debugging, testing, and
  verification.
• Increased complexity of products
• Shortened development cycles
• Higher customer expectations of quality

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Debugging

• The purpose of debugging is to locate and fix the
  offending code responsible for a symptom
  violating a known specification.
• Debugging typically happens during three
  activities in software development
• During the Coding Process
• During the later stages of testing
• In production or deployment

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Help for Software Engineers in Debugging

• Integrated Development environments (IDES)
• Visualization of the necessary underlying
  programming constructs as a means to analyze a
  program
• Automating the debugging process.

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Verification

• In order to verify the functional correctness of
  a program, one needs to capture the model of the
  behavior of the program in a formal language.

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Other approaches to Verification (and the
problems they create)

• Formalize only some properties
• Drawbacks
• Simplification or abstraction may hide critical
  details.
• Use a proof system to automatically verify
• Drawbacks
• Can it handle very complex logical analyses?
• Complex theorem proving systems require a high
  skill level and do not scale to large programs
• The human factor

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Testing

• Typically, prior to coding the program, design
  reviews and code inspections are done as part of
  the static testing effort.
• Once the code is written, various other static
  analysis methods based on source code can be
  applied

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Testing

• When do we stop testing?
• Test Automation
• Automation of test case design
• Regression testing

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Major problems

• Testing and verification are always done in a
  context and rely on a base set of assumptions,
  assumptions which are often unstated and unmet.
• The three topics of debugging, testing, and
  verification are treated by different groups of
  experts.

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A possible solution and a Quote

• Software Engineering The Holistic Discipline.

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In Conclusion

• Problems
• Informal nature of Software
• Solution
• Improvements in Debugging, Testing, and
  Verification
• View SE as a holistic discipline

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Question, Comment, Suggestion Box.