Necessary test cases for Decision Coverage and Modified Condition / Decision Coverage

Abstract

Test coverage refers to the extent to which a given software verification activity satisfies its objectives. Several types of coverage analysis exist to check code correctness. Less strict analysis methods require fewer test cases to satisfy their requirements and consume less resources. Choosing test methods is a compromise between the code correctness and the available resources. However this selection should be based on quantitative consideration. In this paper we concern the Decision Coverage and the more strict Modified Condition / Decision Coverage. We examined several projects written in Ada programming language. Some of them are developed in the industry and the others are open source. We analyzed them in several aspects: Mc- Cabe metric, nesting and maximal argument number in decisions. We discuss how these aspects are affected by difference of the necessary test cases for these testing methods.