Title: A framework to measure coupling using static change impact analysis

Authors: Subhrakanta Panda; Durga Prasad Mohapatra

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, Odisha, India ' Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, Odisha, India

Abstract: Software defects can often be the result of many changes made to a software over a period. Incomplete or incorrect comprehension of the program segments affected by the changes may cost regression testing. Therefore, identification and testing of such program segments early in the testing phase can reveal more regression errors. Driven by this motivation, this paper uses a new slicing technique to identify the affected program parts through static change impact analysis. The probability of a program segment being erroneous is then shown by computing the coupling factor of the affected program parts. We propose a novel static approach to calculating the coupling factor of these affected program segments to predict the erroneous parts. The theoretical validation and comparative analysis shows the correctness and preciseness of the approach.

Keywords: hierarchical slicing; intermediate graphs; dependences; export coupling; software defects; software testing; static change impact analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2016.079526

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2016 Vol.23 No.3, pp.353 - 387

Received: 11 Apr 2015
Accepted: 09 Jun 2015

Published online: 30 Sep 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article