Author(s)

J.M. Voas, K.W. Miller & J.E. Payne

Abstract

A comparison of a dynamic software testability metric to static cyclomatic complexity J.M. Voas, K.W. Miller & J.E. Payne Reliable Software Technologies Corporation, 11150 ABSTRACT This paper compares the dynamic testability prediction technique termed "sensitivity analysis" to the static testability technique termed cyclomatic complexity. The appli- cation that we chose in this empirical study is a CASE generated version of a B-737 autoland and yawdamp systems. For the B-737 systems we analyzed, we isolated those functions that we predict are more prone to hide errors during system/reliability test- ing. We also analyzed the code with several other well-known static metrics. This paper compares and contrasts the results of sensitivity analysis to the results of the static metrics. INTRODUCTION The adage that non-exhaustive software testing cannot reveal the absence of errors and only their existence is as true today as it was when Dijkstra wrote it [4, 1]. Unfortunately,

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