Comparative Analysis of Flow Graph and Dependence Graphs

Abstract

Software Testing is the process of executing a software system to determine whether it matches its specifications when executed in its intended environment. It is an important process of accessing the software to determine its quality. Test case generation is a method to generate test cases to make comparative analysis of actual outcome to predicted outcome. The graphical methods provide the structural representation of the system that facilitates testing the logical development of the program. There are many graphs such as Control Flow Graph (CFG), Program Dependence Graph (PDG), Class Dependence Graphs(ClDG), System Dependence Graph(SDG), etcthat can represent various features like single/multiple procedures, flow/context sensitivity, inheritance, polymorphism and so on. Each of these graphs represents some unique features/parameters like CFG represents flow of control between statements of a program, SDG represents method calls between multiple procedures and so on. The comparative analysis of these graphical techniques can be done on the basis of these features.