A FORMAL ANALYSIS OF THE FAULT-DETECTING ABILITY OF TESTING METHODS

This paper examines several relations between software testing criteria, exploring whether for each relation R and each pair of criteria, C1 and C2, R(C1, C2) guarantees that C1 is better at detecting faults than C2 according to various probabilistic measures of fault-detecting ability. It is shown that the fact that C1 subsumes C2 does not guarantee that C1 is better at detecting faults. Relations that strengthen the subsumption relation and that have more bearing on fault-detecting ability are introduced.