FAULT LINKS: IDENTIFYING MODULE AND FAULT TYPES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP
Inies Raphael, Chemmannoor Michael · 2004
OF THESIS FAULT LINKS: IDENTIFYING MODULE AND FAULT TYPES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP The presented research resulted in a generic component taxonomy, a generic code-fault taxonomy, and an approach to tailoring the generic taxonomies into domain-specific as well as project-specific taxonomies. Also, a means to identify fault links was developed. Fault links represent relationships between the types of code-faults and the types of components being developed or modified. For example, a fault link has been found to exist between Controller modules (that forms a backbone for any software via. its decision making characteristics) and Control/Logic faults (such as unreachable code). The existence of such fault links can be used to guide code reviews, walkthroughs, testing of new code development, as well as code maintenance. It can also be used to direct fault seeding. The results of these methods have been validated. Finally, we also verified the usefulness of the obtained fault links through an experiment conducted using graduate students. The results were encouraging.