Issues Concerning the Structural Coverage of Object-Oriented Software

Abstract

There is a desire and an emerging trend by suppliers of commercial airborne safety-critical systems towards the use of object- oriented technology (OOT). There are issues concerning the structural coverage of software and systems built using OOT. One of the issues is that RTCA DO-l78B, which uses structural coverage as one of the adequacy measures for the requirements-based testing of software for commercial airborne computer-based systems, does not address OOT. This report identifies those issues for OOT features in general, the implementation of those features in the programming languages Ada95, C++, and Java, and the monitoring of the feature and implementation by structural coverage analysis tools. Alternatives for resolution of the issues are given, and the most appropriate resolution proposed. Some of the proposed solutions require that structural coverage be considered in ways that are not typically expected and possibly issue supplementary material to RTCA DO-l78B and its supplement DO-248B. Some of the issues are not new to OOT, but it is anticipated that OOT will make their occurrence either more frequent or occur in new or different ways.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 01, 2002
Accession Number
ADA411909

Entities

People

  • John J. Chilenski
  • John M. Masalskis
  • Thomas C. Timberlake

Organizations

  • Boeing

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Compilers
  • Computer Program Documentation
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Encapsulation
  • Graphical User Interface
  • Guidance
  • Language
  • Object Code
  • Operating Systems
  • Programming Languages
  • Side Effects
  • Software Design
  • Standards
  • United States
  • User Interface

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Allergy and Immunology.
  • Database Systems and Applications
  • Systems Analysis and Design