Download LDRAcover Verifies Test Coverage Completeness

DESIGN East 2012: Booth #415
Media contacts:
Janice Hughes, Hughes Communications, Inc., Media Relations
Tel : +1 (705) 549-8952, Mobile: +1 (705) 774-8686, Email: [email protected]
Mark James, LDRA, Marketing Manager
Tel: +44 (0)151 649 9300, Email: [email protected]
This press release and associated images (in high-resolution compressed jpeg format) can be downloaded from
www.hughescom.net.
Screenshot 1: Code coverage results from within LDRAcover
Screenshot 2: A coverage pass/fail callgraph from within
LDRAcover
LDRAcover Verifies Test Coverage Completeness
LDRAcover verifies test coverage to meet the most stringent safety and security
levels of DO-178B/C, IEC 61508, EN 50128, IEC 62304, and ISO 26262
Boston, MA, DESIGN East. 18 September 2012. LDRA, the leading provider of automated software
verification, source code analysis and test tools, has released LDRAcover™, a stand-alone code
coverage tool that verifies the source code of an application has been fully structurally tested. This
offering responds to the needs of companies that wish to improve overall quality of code by ensuring
complete testing, as well as those companies that must meet the most stringent levels of code verification
in markets such as avionics, defense, industrial controls, automotive and medical devices.
Code Coverage Matters
Because software represents such a large portion of today’s safety- and security-critical systems, many
applications now contain hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Without a tool that confirms all possible
lines, decisions and test paths have been fully executed during testing, software providers cannot know
that an untested component will not inadvertently be called once a system is in the field, leading to the
potential for critical system failure or even loss of life.
Jack Ganssle, industry software guru and chief consultant for The Ganssle Group, underlines the
criticality of complete code coverage: “Studies confirm that, without the use of code coverage analysis,
testing typically exercises only 50% of the code. Given typical bug rates, that means 100K lines of code in
a program will ship with 2500 to 5000 bugs. These bugs lead to many systems failures.”
“LDRAcover addresses this challenge, analysing the code and highlighting the sections that have not
been executed by tests in an easy-to-see graphical interface,” confirmed Ian Hennell, LDRA Operations
Director. “Thanks to tools like this, developers can quickly identify and correct application shortcomings
whether they are caused by incomplete or erroneous test cases, imprecise or inadequate requirements or
unexecutable dead code. In practical terms, code coverage cannot be performed manually. LDRAcover
ensures companies can verify their applications with a focused, easy-to-use tool without having to invest
in a complete tool chain.”
LDRAcover Analysis
Code coverage encompasses several levels of precision that ranges from simply showing whether a line
of source code has been executed at least once by the set of test cases to the stringent requirements of
modified condition/decision coverage (MC/DC), where a component is placed under exhaustive testing.
MC/DC analysis is reserved for the most stringent levels of testing in DO-178B/C and ISO 26262, where
failure of the software can result in loss of life.
LDRAcover analysis provides multiple levels of coverage, allowing the developer to select for:
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Statement—identifies missing test cases, dead code and lines of source code executed
Branch/decision—checks control-flow branches and loops
Procedure/Function Call—verifies that procedure/function calls and call returns executed
Branch Condition—checks that Boolean operands in a condition executed both TRUE and
FALSE
Branch Condition Combination—checks that all unique combinations of Boolean condition
operands executed both TRUE and FALSE
Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC)—confirms that every point of entry and exit was
invoked at least once, every condition in a decision has been taken on all possible outcomes at
least once, and each condition has been shown to independently affect the overall decision
outcome.
Easily configured to match the risk levels of software components, LDRAcover significantly increases the
quality of code and improves the overall testing process—vital not only for immediate application
debugging, but also in reducing failure rates, integration testing and maintenance costs once the
application is in service.
LDRA Automated Tools Easy to Use
Customer testimony confirms that LDRA has optimised its tools for ease of use:
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Frédéric Rabouin, embedded software developer at Esprit Lean
“When evaluating our code, we found that it was easier to use the LDRA’s graphical interface than
that of our IDE. LDRA displayed all of the subfunctions graphically. A thorough analysis only took five
minutes, so it was easy for us to work iteratively with the tool.”
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Company Quality Officer, Seaweed Systems
“Once the scheme for instrumenting and capturing the coverage data had been designed, it was then
quickly possible to automatically instrument all of the source code as part of the standard build
process. Test execution histories were post-processed to yield coverage data for the entire Seaweed
Systems source base in one test run.”
LDRAcover performs all levels of coverage analysis for the C, C++, Ada and Java languages. LDRAcover
works on the host development platform as well as embedded target environments. Demonstrations of
LDRAcover are available at DESIGN East in Boston on September 18 and 19 in Booth 415. Visitors to
the booth can see how code coverage levels are selected for the various software components in an
application and how the code is analysed.
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About LDRA
For more than 40 years, LDRA has developed and driven the market for software that automates code
analysis and software testing for safety-, mission-, security- and business-critical markets. Working with
clients to achieve early error identification and full compliance with industry standards, LDRA traces
requirements through static and dynamic analysis to unit testing and verification for a wide variety of
hardware and software platforms. Boasting a worldwide presence, LDRA is headquartered in the UK with
subsidiaries in the United States and an extensive distributor network. For more information on the LDRA
tool suite, please visit: www.ldra.com.
Please send reader enquiries to:
Mark James
Email: [email protected]