Measuring complexity and coverage of software specifications

Coverage testing in the context of Markov chain usage models refers to coverage of a model of the specification and profile of intended use, rather than coverage of the code that implements the specification. A new measure of specification complexity based on the number of statistically typical paths through the model of the specification is derived. Formulae are presented to compute bounds on the expected number of test cases required to achieve state and are coverage. Formulae are presented to compare different usage models with respect to the amount of testing required to achieve coverage of typical paths. Convexity properties are established for these formulae to facilitate their use in optimization calculations that are used to generate transition probabilities for the usage models. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.