Software Testing Techniques Technology Maturation and Research Strategy Class Report for 17-939A Lu Luo Institute for Software Research International Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA15232 USA 1Software Testing Techniques Technology Maturation and Research Strategies Lu Luo School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University 1 Introduction1 Software testing is as old as the hills in the history of digital computers. The testing of software is an important means of assessing the software to determine its quality. Since testing typically consumes 40~50% of development efforts, and consumes more effort for systems that require higher levels of reliability, it is a significant part of the software engineering. With the development of Fourth generation languages (4GL), which speeds up the implementation process, the proportion of time devoted to testing increased. As the amount of maintenance and upgrade of existing systems grow, significant amount of testing will also be needed to verify systems after changes are made [12]. Despite advances in formal methods and verification techniques, a system still needs to be tested before it is used. Testing remains the truly effective means to assure the quality of a software system of non-trivial complexity [13], as well as one of the most intricate and least understood areas in software engineering [19]. Testing, an important research area within computer science is likely to become even more important in the future. This retrospective on a fifty-year of software testing technique research examines the maturation of the software testing technique research by tracing the major research results that have contributed to the growth of this area. It also assesses th...
