COMP 671 HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT 5 | Complete Solution

COMP 671 – SOFTWARE VERIFICATION & TESTING
HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT 5 [40 POINTS]
[Q1] [10 points] The part of the code that caused the Zune Media Player to freeze is shown below. Perform data flow analysis on this code (consider a non-leap year and a leap year) and explain whether or not data flow testing technique would have helped you catch this bug. Justify any assumptions that you make.
1. year = ORIGINYEAR; /* = 1980 */
2. while (days > 365)
3. {
4. if (IsLeapYear(year))
5. {
6. if (days > 366)
7. {
8. days -= 366;
9. year += 1;
10. }
11. }
12. else
13. {
14. days -= 365;
15. year += 1;
16. }
17. }
[Refer to the Zune bug discussed in Exploratory Software Testing1, pages 50 & 203-204].
[Q2] [15 points] Use the tours discussed in Exploratory Software Testing2 (chapters 4 & 6) as guide to create your own tour. Your tour should have a name, a tie-in with the tourist metaphor, and describe how to use the tour to test some software system.
[Alternative] If you prefer, you can use a non-tourist metaphor. However, you should describe your metaphor in detail, have a name for the approach you use, and describe how to use it to test some software system.
[Q3] [15 points] Suppose you have a situation where software fails after it has been left running continuously for a long period of time. Would you ascribe this failure to input, state, code paths, environment, or data? Take each of the factors and explain your reasoning why you think it would or would not cause the software to fail.
1,2Whittaker, J. (2010). Exploratory software testing. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.