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ICSE 2015

Combining Symbolic Execution and Model Checking for Data Flow Testing

Ting Su, Zhoulai Fu, Geguang Pu, Jifeng He, Zhendong Su

DOI 10.1109/icse.2015.81dblp

Abstract

Data flow testing (DFT) focuses on the flow of data through a program. Despite its higher fault-detection ability over other structural testing techniques, practical DFT remains a significant challenge. This paper tackles this challenge by introducing a hybrid DFT framework: (1) The core of our framework is based on dynamic symbolic execution (DSE), enhanced with a novel guided path search to improve testing performance, and (2) we systematically cast the DFT problem as reach ability checking in software model checking to complement our DSE-based approach, yielding a practical hybrid DFT technique that combines the two approaches' respective strengths. Evaluated on both open source and industrial programs, our DSE-based approach improves DFT performance by 60~80% in terms of testing time compared with state-of-the-art search strategies, while our combined technique further reduces 40% testing time and improves data-flow coverage by 20% by eliminating infeasible test objectives. This combined approach also enables the cross-checking of each component for reliable and robust testing results.

BibTeX
@inproceedings{Su-al:ICSE15,
  author    = {Ting Su and
               Zhoulai Fu and
               Geguang Pu and
               Jifeng He and
               Zhendong Su},
  title     = {Combining Symbolic Execution and Model Checking for Data Flow Testing},
  booktitle = {ICSE (Part I)},
  pages     = {654--665},
  publisher = {{IEEE} Computer Society},
  year      = {2015},
}

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