Search NASASearch

Engineering topics

Hops, Jonathan

Publications and source records attributed to Hops, Jonathan.

Program Helps Design Tests Of Developmental Software

Computer program called "A Formal Test Representation Language and Tool for Functional Test Designs" (TRL) provides automatic software tool and formal language used to implement category-partition method and produce specification of test cases in testing phase of development of software. Category-partition method useful in defining input, outputs, and purpose of test-design phase of development and combines benefits of choosing normal cases having error-exposing properties. Traceability maintained quite easily by creating test design for each objective in test plan. Effort to transform test cases into procedures simplified by use of automatic software tool to create cases based on test design. Method enables rapid elimination of undesired test cases from consideration and facilitates review of test designs by peer groups. Written in C language.

Hops, Jonathan

Formal Functional Test Designs: Bridging the Gap Between Test Requirements and Test Specifications

This presentation describes the testing life cycle, the purpose of the test design phase, and test design methods and gives an example application. Also included is a description of Test Representation Language (TRL), a summary of the language, and an example of an application of TRL. A sample test requirement and sample test design are included.

testing life cycle test design test requirements T

An analysis of defect densities found during software inspections

Software inspection is a technical evaluation process for finding and removing defects in requirements, design, code, and tests. Detailed data was collected during the first three years of experience at JPL on 203 inspections. Statistics are discussed for this set of inspections. Included, on a per inspection basis, are averages of: staff time expended, pages covered, major defects found, minor defects found, and inspection team size. Analysis of variance showed a significantly higher density of defects during requirements inspections. It was also observed, that the defect densities found decreased exponentially as the work products approached the coding phase. Increasing the pace of the inspection meeting decreased the density of defects found. This relationship was observed to hold for both major and minor defect densities, although it was more pronounced for minor defects. Guidelines are provided for conducting successful software inspections based upon three years of JPL experience.

Kelly, John C.