An empirical comparison of a dynamic software testability metric to static cyclomatic complexity
Jeffrey M. Voas, Keith Miller, Jeffrey E. Payne · 1993
This paper compares the dynamic testability prediction technique termed "sensitivity analysis" to the static testability technique termed cyclomatic complexity. The application that we chose in this empirical study is a CASE generated version of a B-737 autoland system. For the B-737 system we analyzed, we isolated those functions that we predict are more prone to hide errors during system/reliability testing. We also analyzed the code with several other wellknown static metrics. This paper compares and contrasts the results of sensitivity analysis to the results of the static metrics. I. Introduction The adage that non-exhaustive software testing cannot reveal the absence of errors and only their existence is as true today as it was when Dijkstra wrote it [4, 1]. Unfortunately, between the time then and now, we have begun to build orders-of-magnitude more complex systems while our testing technologies are no more advanced. Thus the same problems that we had in past years when testing...