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We introduce a family of coverage criteria, called Multi-Point Stride Coverage (MPSC). MPSC generalizes branch coverage to coverage of tuples of branches taken from the execution sequence of a program. We investigate its potential as a replacement for dataflow coverage, such as def-use coverage. We find that programs can be instrumented for MPSC easily, that the instrumentation usually incurs less overhead than that for def-use coverage, and that MPSC is comparable in usefulness to def-use in predicting test suite eectiveness. We also find that the space required to collect MPSC can be predicted from the number of branches in the program.

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Dr. Mohammad Mahdi Hassan is working as an assistant Professor in Computer Science Department at Al Qassim University, Buraidah, Saudi Arabia. He finished his PHD in Software Engineering form University of Western Ontario, Canada.

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