Software Testing

Prof. Meenakshi D’Souza

Department of Computer Science and Engineering
International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore

Lecture - 24
Logic Coverage Criteria: Making clauses determine predicate

Hello again. We are in the last lecture of week 5, we are in the middle of doing logic
coverage criteria based testing. I defined what the various logic coverage criteria are and
showed you the subsumption relations. Today what we are going to see is suppose you
have to take a real program and you use this logic coverage criteria to actually correctly
write your test requirements and subsequently define test values; how would you go
about doing it?

(Refer Slide Time: 00:41)

So, just to recap, what we saw till now, here is all the logic coverage criteria that we saw.
We began with predicate and clause coverage, the most elementary form of logic
coverage. Predicate coverage says test for the predicate to be true once and false once,
clause coverage says test each clause to be true and false once. Then we saw all
combinations coverage, right on top in terms of subsumption. It says test for the entire
truth table of all the clauses in the predicate. We say that is too expensive because it
reads to an exponential number of test cases. So, what can we do in between?
The in-between coverage criteria are broadly classified as active coverage criteria on the
left hand side, 3 kinds and inactive coverage criteria on the right hand side, 2 kinds. Both
these cases, the premise first choose one clause at a time in the predicate, call it the major
clause. In active coverage criteria, major clause determines the predicate, the minor
clauses take values as the major clause determines the predicate. In inactive coverage
criteria the minor clauses take values such that the major clause does not determine the
predicate. So, this is a summary slide that contains all the logic coverage criteria that we
saw and how they are all related to each other, what subsumes what and what does not
subsume what?

(Refer Slide Time: 02:06)

The focus of today's lecture would be to design test cases. So, we take one at a time and
then see how to design test cases. We saw during the logic coverage criteria lecture that
we did as a third lecture of week 5, these, how to design test cases for clause and
predicate coverage and for all combinations coverage. They are reasonably easy because
as long as a predicate is not always true, which means a predicate is not valid or as long
as the predicate is not always false, which means the predicate is never valid which
means it is a contradiction. So, it is always possible to get test cases that will do coverage
criteria for both predicate coverage and clause coverage. You have to identify a set of
values that will make the predicate or the clause true once and another set of values that
will make the predicate or the clause false once.
For all combinations coverage it is again easy. Write out the entire truth table and then
write test cases for every row in the truth table that will make each of the clauses true
and false in turn. The only problem that we might have to solve is suppose there is a
predicate that comes deep down in a program as a part of an if statement which is way
down in a program in the sense that it comes, let us say, after a few hundred lines in the
program. It so happens that the variables that you encounter in the if statement, none of
those variables deal with input values directly. So, I should be able to give inputs to the
program first of all to reach that if statement and exercise my desired coverage criteria
for the predicate in that if statement.

So, you remember right in the first week we saw this thing of observability and
controllability and then I told you about RIPR criteria. So, we will have to do
reachability and then we will have to do infection to be able to achieve our coverage
requirement and in turn propagation. So, what we will do in the next week, the first
module that we will see we look at logic coverage of source code. Take a piece of
program look at all the predicates in the program and see how to apply the coverage
criteria that we learnt. At that point we will deal with this last item here of reachability or
RIPR criteria in detail which basically means that if a predicate in a program deals with
internal variables that are not inputs, how to give input values that will make program
reach and achieve the desired coverage criteria on that predicate.

(Refer Slide Time: 04:50)

So, now what about designing test cases for the rest of these coverage criteria? For the 3
active clause coverage criteria and the 2 inactive clause coverage criteria. The first thing
to do and remember is that for active clause coverage criteria. We chose each clause will
take turn as a major clause and the minor clauses take values such as the major clause
determines the predicate. Now, what we will do is how to make a major clause that is
chosen in any point in time determine the predicate. Now major clause determining a
predicate means the predicate should take true or false values as and when the major
clause takes true or false values. So, we will see how to do that by using examples and
then based on that how to choose TRs and test cases that satisfy the TRs.

(Refer Slide Time: 05:30)

So, what I will do is I will walk you through several examples that tell you how to make
a major clause determine a predicate. In all these examples we do a generic definition
based approach of deciding when a major clause determines a predicate. So, here is what
we do to make a major clause determine a predicate. So, you consider predicate p and let
us say there is a clause c in the predicate p. I want c to be the major clause which means
to be able to do active clause coverage criteria, I want c to be able to determine p and
when I do inactive clause coverage criteria, I want c to be able to not determine p. For
the purposes of this lecture, I will focus on active clause coverage criteria and tell you
how to make a particular chosen clause which is the major clause determine a predicate
p. So, I fix a predicate p and I pick up a clause c in that predicate, call it the major clause.
The idea is when will c determine p? For small predicates it will be easy.
But for large predicates it may not be easy to know when exactly c will determine p. So,
we use a default definition based approach which is like a set of steps that you need to do
to make c determine p. So, here are the steps. So, what we will do first is we will take the
predicate p, take every occurrence of c in p. By the way without loss of generality, I will
assume that in the all predicates that we see particular clause occurs exactly once. If it
occurs more than once the second occurrence is usually redundant and we remove the
second occurrence. So, what I do is I take the predicate p, consider the place where the
clause c occurs in the predicate p and replace c with true. So, call that resulting formula
or resulting predicate by this notation, p subscript c is equal to true.

Now, I do the second thing that I do is I take the predicate p, consider the clause c
replace c with value false wherever c occurs and simplify the logical formula
corresponding to the predicate call that p c false. So, is it clear what Pc true and Pc false
are? Pc true means take the predicate p, consider an occurrence of c in p replace that
occurrence with true and simplify the formula. Pc false says take the predicate p,
consider the occurrence of c in the predicate p, replace c with false.

So, once I replace c with true or false to get these 2 predicates Pc true and Pc false,
please remember that p has no more occurrences of c. c is completely eliminated from
the predicate p. Now I define the following formula Pc. I take this for atomic, this
formula Pc true and XOR it with the formula Pc false. Read this notation that looks like a
lens of a this thing as XOR. You remember what XOR as a logical operator is? XOR
says a XOR b says that it will be true exactly when one of a or b in is true right. So, or
says it will be true when one of them is true, it could be the case that both of them will
also be true to make an or true. XOR is exclusively or exclusive or means a particular a
XOR with b is true if and only if one of a or b is true.

So, I take p, fix a clause c, my major clause, take copy of p replace c with true simplify
the predicate keep it on one side that is Pc true. Then I take the same predicate p replace
the clause c with false, simplify it, keep it on one side, that is Pc false. Now I XOR these
2 formulas call it P c.
(Refer Slide Time: 09:37)

What do we do with Pc? It turns out that Pc describes the exact conditions under which
the value of c determines p. Why is that so? That is so because if you see the clauses that
occur in Pc first of all c is not there they take values such that when p is Pc is true c will
determine p in terms of its truth values and the clauses in Pc take values such that when
Pc is false p.

So, the truth or the falsity is independent of truth or falsity of c. Why does this happen?
Instead of doing a proof, I will show you several examples of how to take a predicate and
a clause how to determine Pc and understand why Pc will represent the conditions under
which the clause c determines P.
(Refer Slide Time: 10:26)

So, here is the first formula. So, the predicate that I want to illustrate by using an

example is this predicate. I have taken the predicate p which is a V b. How many clauses
are there in the p, in the predicate p? There are 2 clauses: one clause is a one clause is b.
Now I want to be able to compute p a which means I fix a to be my major clause and I
want a to determine p. So, as per my formula, what should I do? I take this p and first
replace every occurrence of a in the predicate p by true and then I replace every
occurrence of a in the predicate p by false and XOR them. That is what I have written in
the first line here. This is as per our definition. P a is the same as p with a replaced with
true, XOR-ed with p with a replaced with false right. What is p with a replaced with

true? p in this example is a V b. So, you take this predicate a V b, instead of a write true,
that is what I have written in the second line here.

So, this is a V b which is the predicate p with a replaced with true and p with a replaced
false is false or b with a replaced with false and then my goal is to XOR them. Now what

is the semantics of true V b ? True V b should basically be the same as true right because

true is always true. So, b does not really influence. So, true V b simplifies to be true

logically and false V b simplifies to be b logically.

So, you can look up the basic rules of inference of proposition and logic and these would
be some elementary rules. So, this is what is called the generalization, this is what is
called absorption. So, true V b simplifies to true, false V b simplifies to b. Now again one

more rule. I have to XOR true with b which is the same as ¬ b right because it says what

either exclusively true will be true V b will be true right. So, it should be the case that not
b is true or in other words b should be false.

So, what I have done here? I have taken the predicate p, I want a to be the major clause
in p and I want to compute p a. P a says, p a is true whenever a determines p. So, I did

use the formula that we had and simply substituted simplified, and got p a to be ¬ b right.
Now if we see how do I read this, as I read this as follows: for the major clause a to
determine the predicate p the only minor clause b; b is the only other clause here must be
false.

Why is that so? Even without working this out if you independently see this formula here
I want a to determine p which means what I want p to be true or false exactly when a is
true or false right. Suppose b was true, then, the whole predicate will become true
independent of the value of a. So, b has to be false for a to influence when p becomes
true and when p becomes false. That is exactly the conclusion that we have derived by

using this formula and substituting. We have derived that p a is the same as ¬ b or, in

other words, for major clause a to determine the predicate p, ¬ b should be true or b
should be false. Symmetrically suppose b was a major clause, for b to determine p if I

replace the same derivation, in the same derivation a with b, I will get ¬ a, which means
what for b to determine p, a should be false.
(Refer Slide Time: 14:15)

So, we look at a couple of more examples. The second example that we consider will be

the predicate p which is now a Λ b instead of a V b which we saw in the last slide. I
repeat the exercise, now I want a as my major clause and I want to know when a will
determine p. So, I use the formula that we learnt, I say p a is the same as p with a
substituted with true XOR-ed with p with a substituted with false. So, I take p which is a

and b here I substitute a to be true. So, I get true Ʌ b, XOR it with a substituted with false

which gives me false Ʌ b. True Ʌ b, if I use the rules of logic, maps to b and false Ʌ b, if I

again use the rules of logic, maps to false. Why is this so, because true Ʌ b true is more
general and is a restrictive operator.

So, it will be true exactly when b is true and false and b will be false all the time because
it is anded with false right. So, b XORed with false as per rules of propositional logic is
equivalent to b. So, what have we concluded? If a is a major clause, for a to determine b
sorry a to determine the predicate p, p a is the same as b which means for major clause a
to determine p the minor clause b must be true. So, if you put it back and intuitively look
at it, suppose b was true. Suppose b was true then a will completely determine p no
because if a is true, p will be true and a is false, p will be false. That is exactly what we
have concluded here and symmetrically if I consider b to be the major clause and repeat
this exercise for b I will get p b which is the conditions under which b determines p to be
equivalent to a.
(Refer Slide Time: 16:06)

So, one more example before we move on. Here I am considering the predicate p to be a

is equivalent to b which means a Ξ b. I again want a to be the major clause and compute
Pa which says when a determines p. So, I use the same formula, take the predicate p,
replace the occurrence of a with true XOR it with replace the occurrence of a with false.

True equivalent to b turns out to be b, false equivalent to b turns out to be ¬ b. b XOR

with ¬ b means what always b V¬ b is true which is like a valid formula or a tautology.
So, this simplifies to be true.

So, here what has happened? When we try to make a the major clause and make a
determine the predicate p, the answer that we get is true. How do you read an answer like
true? You read it as no matter what happens, for any value of b if I choose a to be the
major clause a can never determine p. So you can come to several conclusions as we saw
in these examples. For a predicate like this, I want a to determine p then b must be false.
For a predicate which looks like p is equal to a and b if I want a to determine p, then b
must be true. For a predicate which looks like a is equivalent to b, I try to make a
determine p, but I end up concluding that a can never determine p.
(Refer Slide Time: 17:37)

So, what, how do I understand this thing of never being able to determine the predicate
in terms of testing? In terms of testing, for a predicate p where the value of p c for a
clause turns out to be true, that is what happened here right in this example for the
predicate p is equal to a equivalent to b, the value of p a turns out to be true. In that case
it means that a clause cannot determine a predicate right, cannot determine a predicate
because the minor clauses cannot take any other values.

So, which means what? Inactive clause coverage criteria is typically infeasible because
inactive clause coverage criteria if you remember from the previous lecture, what does it
say? It says that minor clauses take values such that major clause does not determine p.
But in this case when I end up computing p a for a to be a major clause and I get the
answer true, I conclude that no matter what happens the clause that I have chosen as the
major clause cannot determine.

So, I cannot basically do inactive clause coverage criteria. Typically it is known that
when I have predicates with XOR or equivalence, ICC criteria turn out to be infeasible
because I will end up with these funny results like true and all that. Symmetrically if you
think of it a little bit, if I try to compute similar thing p a and then suppose I end up with
false, then I can conclude that active clause coverage criteria will not be feasible. That is
what I have written here in the third point. I say if a predicate p has a clause c such that p
c evaluates to false then active coverage criteria will be infeasible for p with respect to c.
It basically means the clause is redundant you might as well remove it from the predicate
p.

(Refer Slide Time: 19:32)

So, I will show an example here. When do I say the clause is redundant? Purposefully in
this example I have considered a predicate that looks like this. So, what is the predicate
read as? It reads as a and b or with a and not b right. So, now, what is this basically? If
you use the rules of logic, propositional logic a little bit and try to simplify it b or not b
are neutral, they neutralize each other they will result to be true and a you just have 2
copies of a which are redundant copies of a. So, p the predicate p is basically just a, but
for some reason it occurs in complicated form like this. So, if the predicate p is just a, but
b is occurring is a sort of a useless form here, I want to be able to conclude that b cannot
determine p.

So, how do I do that? I compute p b and I have to end up with false. That is what this
derivation illustrates. What does this derivation illustrate? It says p b is you do the same
formula, replace b with true XOR it with b replaced with false. So, I take the predicate p
which is this I replace every occurrence of b with true which is what I have done here
and here I replace every occurrence of b with false which is what I have done here and

simplify this formula. So, if you simplify this formula a Λ true V a Λ ¬ true, you will get
a or false and here if you simplify this formula, you will get false or a a or false is the
same as a false or a is the same as a a XOR-ed with a is basically false. So, it is
impossible for b to determine p. So, it is as good as saying this b here which occurs in the
predicate p is fairly useless, is redundant you might as well remove it.

(Refer Slide Time: 21:26)

So, we will go back and do one more example to understand how a clause determines a
predicate because it will be useful for you. I will also give you in the assignment for this
week, I will give you a set of exercises where you should work out for at least one more
formula, how a particular clause determines a predicate.

So, here is another example. The predicate that I have taken this time is p which reads as
a Λ b V c. Now I want to determine p a which is basically I have chosen a to be the major
clause and I want to determine conditions under which a determines p. So, I use the
formula p a is p a true XORed with p a false. So, I replace a with true in this predicate p,
I get this. I replace a with false in the predicate p, I get this part. I now use the rules of

logic to simplify it. True ANDed with b V c is the same as b V c, false ANDed with b V

c is the same as false, b V c XORed with false is the same as b V c.

So, now what it says is that for a to determine p, b V c must be true. That is not too

surprising right because if you see p is a ANDed with b V c right. So, unless this whole

thing is true a cannot influence p. So, b V c must be true. b V c must be true, you apply

the condition for b V c as another formula and find out when it will be true. You use the

semantics for or. If you use the semantics for V, b V c will be true in 3 possible cases:
both b and c are true, which is listed here, b is true c is false or b is false c is true. So,

there are 3 choices to make b V c true. Now suppose I have to do correlated active
clause coverage for a then what can I do ? I will pick one pair when a is true and another
pair when a is false. So, I can pick a to be true and let us say I pick this, b true, c true. In
which case the predicate p will evaluate to true and now a is false I pick some other pair
let us say I pick the pair b false, c true.

So, in which case what will happen? This whole thing will be true and a is false. So, p
will turn out to be false. So, a will correctly determine p. Now for restricted active clause
coverage criteria what do I have to do ? I take value of a to be true and false again, a is
the major clause and I choose the same pair because that is what RACC says right. The
minor clauses all take the same value.

So, I could take for example, a to be true and b and c to be true, in which case the whole
predicate, if I substitute it back will evaluate it to true. Or I could take a to be false and b
and c to be true in which case the whole predicate when substituted back will evaluate to
false. So, is it clear? Please, how to do p a, p b and p c. So, to be able to be completely
satisfied GACC, RACC, CACC and other criteria for this predicate what I have worked
out on this slide is only for a. So, you have to repeat a similar exercise for b being the
major clause, similar exercise for c being the major clause and then write all conditions
for GACC, CACC and RACC. .

(Refer Slide Time: 25:00)

So here for the same predicate, in this slide, I have worked out what happens when b is
the major clause. When b is the major clause I am interested in computing p b. So, I take
p b true XOR with p b false take this predicate p replace b with true I get this part take
this same predicate replace b with false I get the part here. Simplify these logical
formulae. You might have to remember few rules of propositional logic to be able to do

this simplification. So, a AND-ed with true V c; true V c is same as true, false V c is
same as false.

So, a AND-ed with true is a, a AND-ed with c I cannot simplify it further, I keep it like

this. Formula a XOR with a and c simplified to a V¬ c, the last 2 parts from this line 25
equation 25 to equation 26 may not be very obvious. One simple way to convince
yourself that 25 and 26 are the same would be to write the truth table for 25 and write the
truth table for 26 and check that the truth tables are the same. That is the easy way to
understand why this simplifies to this. Even otherwise if you do not know this
simplification it is to leave it like this. a XOR-ed with a and c and say this is the
condition under which b determines p right because that also be equally handled in terms
of writing test cases.

So, similarly because b and c come with this disjunction inside the bracket I can do a
similar exercise for Pc and it will be symmetric and Pc will turn out to be a OR-ed with
not b.

(Refer Slide Time: 26:42)

Now, how to write test requirements for active clause coverage criteria? So, sometimes
active clause coverage criteria can get little complicated for certain predicates in terms of
finding TRs and subsequently finding satisfying test cases. So, I will walk you through
one final example and see how to actually do the end to end TR generation and test case
writing for active clause coverage.

So, this time I have taken similar predicate, but slightly different. If you go back, the

predicate we had here was a Λ b V c.

(Refer Slide Time: 27:20)

Now, what I have taken is a V b Λ c. You could do a similar exercise for that predicate
also it does not matter, but just to illustrate I have taken another predicate. What was my
goal now? My goal is to be able to, for each of these clauses, 3 clauses taking turns to be
the major clause to be able to find test requirements for GACC, CACC and RACC. So,
there are 3 clauses in this predicate a, b and c. So, what I do is I first write out the truth
table of the predicate. It helps to write out the truth table because you can understand it
little easily.

So, I have written out the truth table here. Truth table has eight rows, you can work it out
for yourself as a small exercise and I have done using this kind of working out that we
did for this formula I have calculated p a, p b and p c. I have not shown you the working
please try out as a small exercise, but if you use the formula p a is p a replaced with true
XOR-ed with a replaced with false and then use the rules of logic to simplify it you
should get something like this.

(Refer Slide Time: 28:33)

Similarly, for p b, similarly for p c. Now what I am going to do I want to be able to do

first do test requirements let us say for generalized active clause coverage criteria. So, let
us recollect the definition of GACC. GACC definition says each major clause will be
true and false and minor clauses will be such that the major clause determines the
predicate. So, now, what will be the TR for GACC ? I am writing what I wrote in
English here in terms of true false values. So, the first pair here is when a is the major
clause, a is true once AND-ed with a determining p which is p a; a is false AND-ed with
a determining p which is again p a. Now the second pair here is b’s turn to be the major
clause b is the major clause.

So, b is made true once AND-ed with p b which says when b determines p b is made
false once, again AND-ed with p b. The third pair here is c's turn to be the major clause:
c is true once, false once. For c to determine p, I specify it using p c. So, here is a table
that gives you the true false values for the test requirements for GACC. So, a is the major
clause first 2 rows I am sorry there is a typo here it should be b is the major clause for the
third and fourth row c is the major clause for the fifth and sixth row right. So, a is true
once if you see concentrate on the ones in bold in the table a is true once false, once b is
true once false once, c is true once false once. The rest of the values take val rest of the
clauses, b and c in this case and a and c in this case and a and b in this case take values
such that the predicate becomes true once false once, true once false once, true once false
once. So, this is how I do GACC for the predicate p.

Now, if you look at this table you will see that there are repetitions like for example, the
first row is the same as the fifth row; a is true, b is false, c is true, a is true ,b is false c is
true because the assignments are the same, the predicate evaluates to be true. Similarly in
the table, the second and the fourth rows are the same. So, I do not have to repeat them.
So, I keep only one copy for each of these. So, how many tests totally are needed ? Four
test cases are needed one for row 1, one for row 2, one for row 3 and one for row 6
which is not a repeat of any of the earlier rows. So, totally my test requirement for
GACC for this example predicate p for each clause a, b and c taking turns to be the major
clause can be achieved by the set of four TRs which are basically these rows in the table.

(Refer Slide Time: 31:32)

Similarly, you can work out TRs for CACC and for RACC just as a small exercise
because it may not be very obvious to do. I urge you all to please work out the test
requirements for CACC and for RACC and feel free to get back in touch with me in the
forum if you have any doubts about working out. You will realize after working out this
particular example correlated active clause coverage criteria is the same as general active
clause coverage criteria. Typically for several predicates CACC is considered to be very
good to use it is practically useful and quite useful thing when compared to other
predicates.

(Refer Slide Time: 32:15)

So, this will be the last lecture of week 5. What I will do next week? The first 2 modules
we will continue with logic coverage criteria, but we will see how it is practically useful.
In the next lecture we will take a piece of program and see how to apply logical coverage
criteria that we learnt to test that program. And in the lecture after that, we will take a
specification as a finite state machine and see how to apply logical coverage criteria that
we learnt to be able to test that specification, write test cases for that specification.

Thank you.