Exploring topological structure of Boolean expressions for test data selection

Several test strategies have emerged to detect faults associated Boolean expressions. Current approaches lack a proper model to give an overall picture of the Boolean expressions and comprehensive exploration of test data space. This paper proposes a topological model (T-model) to systematically represent Boolean expressions and test data space, and theoretically analyzes the capability and limitations of existing test strategies. We explicitly identify the sufficient and necessary conditions to detect the faults of interest, introduce new Boolean expression related faults and reform the fault hierarchy, where a family of test strategies is defined to detect the corresponding faults. © 2009 IEEE.