A quantitative analysis for different testing criteria through program decomposition

Many software testing criteria have been proposed which demonstrate different testing capacities. However, there is still less research exploring what the quantitative difference is among different testing criteria. A quantitative difference among different criteria is apparently a good guideline for selecting appropriate testing methodologies. All-statements and all-branches testing criteria are well known, and both of them have been widely applied in software testing. This research infers a quantitative analysis to measure the difference between the all-statements criterion and all-branches criterion. The quantitative analysis provides a theoretical basis for measuring testing efforts between different testing methodologies. A testing metric is proposed to compare the all-statements criterion with all-branches. A CASE tool for this metric is presented.