The collateral coverage of data flow criteria when branch testing

When exercising program code with test data in an attempt to satisfy a given testing criterion, there will be a concurrent accrual of coverage in respect of other testing criteria. Knowledge of the extent of such ‘collateral coverage’ can be used to advantage both in providing better estimates of the overheads entailed by the overall testing exercise, and in helping to determine an optimal sequence for the application of a set of testing methods. In this paper, the results deriving from a set of experiments are reported. The aim of the experiments was to investigate the extent of the collateral coverage that is achieved in respect of the data-flow testing criteria when branch testing is undertaken.