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Finding Failure Causes through Automated Testing

Holger Cleve and Andreas Zeller
Universität Passau
Lehrstuhl für Softwaresysteme
Innstraße 33
94032 Passau, Germany

Phone: +49 851 509-30 91
Fax: +49 851 509-30 92
e-mail: snelting@fmi.uni-passau.de
WWW: http://www.infosun.fmi.uni-passau.de/st/
Proc. of the Fourth International Workshop on Automated Debugging, Munich, Germany, 28-30 August 2000.

Abstract

A program fails. Under which circumstances does this failure occur? One single algorithm, the delta debugging algorithm, suffices to determine these failure-inducing circumstances. Delta debugging applies the scientific method of debugging to narrow down the set of failure-inducing circumstances automatically - circumstances such as the program input, changes to the program code, or executed statements.

Keywords

Testing and debugging, debugging aids, combinatorial testing, execution tracing

Contents

  1. Debugging by Testing
  2. Configurations and Tests
  3. Minimality of Scenarios
  4. Finding Failure-Inducing Changes
  5. Simplifying Test Cases
  6. Reducing Execution Traces
  7. Conclusion and Future Work

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Lehrstuhl Softwaresysteme <snelting@fmi.uni-passau.de> - Last modified: 02/15/2001