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Detection or isolation of defects? An experimental comparison of unit testing and code inspection

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Author

Summary, in English

Code inspections and white-box testing have both been used for unit testing. One is a static analysis technique, the other, a dynamic one, since it is based on executing test cases. Naturally, the question arises whether one is superior to the other, or, whether either technique is better suited to detect or isolate certain types of defects. We investigated this question with an experiment with a focus on detection of the defects (failures) and isolation of the underlying sources of the defects (faults). The results indicate that there exist significant differences for some of the effects of using code inspection versus testing. White-box testing is more effective, i.e. detects significantly more defects while inspection isolates the underlying source of a larger share of the defects detected. Testers spend significantly more time, hence the difference in efficiency is smaller, and is not statistically significant. The two techniques are also shown to detect and identify different defects, hence motivating the use of a combination of methods

Publishing year

2003

Language

English

Pages

3-13

Publication/Series

14th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering

Document type

Conference paper

Publisher

IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

Topic

  • Computer Science

Keywords

  • fault detection
  • failure detection
  • defect isolation
  • defect detection
  • unit testing
  • code inspection
  • white-box testing
  • static analysis
  • test case execution
  • controlled experiment

Conference name

14th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering

Conference date

2003-11-17 - 2003-11-20

Conference place

Denver, CO, United States

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISBN: 0-7695-2007-3