Verification and Validation

Objectives
 To introduce software verification and validation and to
discuss the distinction between them
 To describe the program inspection process and its role in
V&V
 To explain static analysis as a verification technique
 To describe the Cleanroom software development process
Topics covered
 Verification and validation planning
 Software inspections
 Automated static analysis
 Cleanroom software development
Verification vs validation
 Verification:
"Are we building the product right”.
 The software should conform to its specification.
 Validation:
"Are we building the right product”.
 The software should do what the user really requires.
The V & V process
 Is a whole life-cycle process - V & V must be
applied at each stage in the software process.
 Has two principal objectives
 The discovery of defects in a system;
 The assessment of whether or not the system is useful
and useable in an operational situation.
V& V goals
 Verification and validation should establish
confidence that the software is fit for purpose.
 This does NOT mean completely free of defects.
 Rather, it must be good enough for its intended use
and the type of use will determine the degree of
confidence that is needed.
V & V confidence
 Depends on system’s purpose, user expectations and
marketing environment
 Software function
 The level of confidence depends on how critical the software
is to an organisation.
 User expectations
 Users may have low expectations of certain kinds of software.

 Marketing environment
 Getting a product to market early may be more important
than finding defects in the program.
Static and dynamic verification
 Software inspections. Concerned with analysis of
the static system representation to discover problems
(static verification)
 May be supplement by tool-based document and code analysis
 Software testing. Concerned with exercising and
observing product behaviour (dynamic verification)
 The system is executed with test data and its operational
behaviour is observed
Static and dynamic V&V
Software
inspections

Requir ements High-level Formal Detailed

Program
specifica tion design specifica tion design

Prototype Prog ram

testing
Program testing
 Can reveal the presence of errors NOT their
absence.
 The only validation technique for non-functional
requirements as the software has to be executed to see
how it behaves.
 Should be used in conjunction with static
verification to provide full V&V coverage.
Types of testing
 Defect testing
 Tests designed to discover system defects.
 A successful defect test is one which reveals the presence of defects
in a system.
 Covered in Chapter 23
 Validation testing
 Intended to show that the software meets its requirements.
 A successful test is one that shows that a requirements has been
properly implemented.
Testing and debugging
 Defect testing and debugging are distinct
processes.
 Verification and validation is concerned with establishing
the existence of defects in a program.
 Debugging is concerned with locating and
repairing these errors.
 Debugging involves formulating a hypothesis
about program behaviour then testing these
hypotheses to find the system error.
The debugging process

Test Test
Specification
results cases

Locate Design Repair Retest

error error repair error prog ram
V & V planning
 Careful planning is required to get the most out of
testing and inspection processes.
 Planning should start early in the development
process.
 The plan should identify the balance between static
verification and testing.
 Test planning is about defining standards for the
testing process rather than describing product tests.
The V-model of development
Requir ements System System Detailed
specifica tion specifica tion design design

System Sub-system Module and

Acceptance
integ ration integ ration unit code
test plan
test plan test plan and test

Acceptance System Sub-system

Service
test integ ration test integ ration test
The structure of a software test plan
 The testing process.
 Requirements traceability.
 Tested items.
 Testing schedule.
 Test recording procedures.
 Hardware and software requirements.
 Constraints.
The software test plan
The testing process
A description of the major phases of the testing process. These might be
as described earlier in this chapter.

Requirements traceability
Users are most interested in the system meeting its requirements and
testing should be planned so that all requirements are individually tested.

Tested items
The products of the software process that are to be tested should be
specified.

Testing schedule
An overall testing schedule and resource allocation for this schedule.
This, obviously, is linked to the more general project development
schedule.

Test recording procedures

It is not enough simply to run tests. The results of the tests must be
systematically recorded. It must be possible to audit the testing process
to check that it been carried out correctly.

Hardware and software requirements

This section should set out software tools required and estimated
hardware utilisation.

Constraints
Constraints affecting the testing process such as staff shortages should
be anticipated in this section.
Software inspections
 These involve people examining the source representation
with the aim of discovering anomalies and defects.
 Inspections not require execution of a system so may be
used before implementation.
 They may be applied to any representation of the system
(requirements, design,configuration data, test data, etc.).
 They have been shown to be an effective technique for
discovering program errors.
Inspection success
 Many different defects may be discovered in a single
inspection. In testing, one defect ,may mask another
so several executions are required.
 The reuse domain and programming knowledge so
reviewers are likely to have seen the types of error that
commonly arise.
Inspections and testing
 Inspections and testing are complementary and not
opposing verification techniques.
 Both should be used during the V & V process.
 Inspections can check conformance with a specification
but not conformance with the customer’s real
requirements.
 Inspections cannot check non-functional characteristics
such as performance, usability, etc.
Program inspections
 Formalised approach to document reviews
 Intended explicitly for defect detection (not
correction).
 Defects may be logical errors, anomalies in the code
that might indicate an erroneous condition (e.g. an
uninitialised variable) or non-compliance with
standards.
Inspection pre-conditions
 A precise specification must be available.
 Team members must be familiar with the
organisation standards.
 Syntactically correct code or other system
representations must be available.
 An error checklist should be prepared.
 Management must accept that inspection will
increase costs early in the software process.
 Management should not use inspections for staff
appraisal ie finding out who makes mistakes.
The inspection process

Planning

Overvie w Follow-up
Indi vidual
Rework
pr epar ation
Inspection
meeting
Inspection procedure
 System overview presented to inspection team.
 Code and associated documents are
distributed to inspection team in advance.
 Inspection takes place and discovered errors
are noted.
 Modifications are made to repair discovered
errors.
 Re-inspection may or may not be required.
Inspection roles
Author or owner The programmer or designer responsible for
producing the program or document. Responsible
for fixing defects discovered during the inspection
process.
Inspector Finds errors, omissions and inconsistencies in
programs and documents. May also identify
broader issues that are outside the scope of the
inspection team.
Reader Presents the code or document at an inspection
meeting.
Scribe Records the results of the inspection meeting.
Chairman or moderator Manages the process and facilitates the inspection.
Reports process results to the Chief moderator.
Chief moderator Responsible for inspection process improvements,
checklist updating, standards development etc.
Inspection checklists
 Checklist of common errors should be used to
drive the inspection.
 Error checklists are programming language
dependent and reflect the characteristic errors that are
likely to arise in the language.
 In general, the 'weaker' the type checking, the larger the
checklist.
 Examples: Initialisation, Constant naming, loop
termination, array bounds, etc.
Inspection checks 1
Data faults Are all program variables initialised before their values are
used?
Have all constants been named?
Should the upper bound of arrays be equal to the size of the
array or Size -1?
If character strings are used, is a de limiter explicitly
assigned?
Is there any possibility of buffer overflow?
Control faults For each conditional statement, is the condition correct?
Is each loop certain to terminate?
Are compound statements correctly bracketed?
In case statements, are all possible cases accounted for?
If a break is required after each case in case statements, has
it been included?
Input/output faults Are all input variables used?
Are all output variables assigned a value before they are
output?
Can unexpected inputs cause corruption?
Inspection checks 2
Interface faults Do all function and method calls have the correct number
of parameters?
Do formal and actual parameter types match?
Are the parameters in the right order?
If components access shared memory, do they have the
same model of the shared memory structure?
Storage If a linked structure is modified, have all links been
management faults correctly reassigned?
If dynamic storage is used, has space been allocated
correctly?
Is space explicitly de-allocated after it is no longer
required?
Exception Have all possible error conditions been taken into account?
management faults
Inspection rate
 500 statements/hour during overview.
 125 source statement/hour during individual
preparation.
 90-125 statements/hour can be inspected.
 Inspection is therefore an expensive process.
 Inspecting 500 lines costs about 40 man/hours effort -
about £2800 at UK rates.
Automated static analysis
 Static analysers are software tools for source text
processing.
 They parse the program text and try to discover
potentially erroneous conditions and bring these to
the attention of the V & V team.
 They are very effective as an aid to inspections - they
are a supplement to but not a replacement for
inspections.
Static analysis checks
Fault class Static analysis check
Data faults Variables used before initialisation
Variables declared but never used
Variables assigned twice but never used between
assignments
Possible array bound violations
Undeclared variables
Control faults Unreachable code
Unconditional branches into loops
Input/output faults Variables output twice with no intervening
assignment
Interface faults Parameter type mismatches
Parameter number mismatches
Non-usage of the results of functions
Uncalled functions and procedures
Storage management Unassigned pointers
faults Pointer arithmetic
Stages of static analysis
 Control flow analysis. Checks for loops with
multiple exit or entry points, finds unreachable
code, etc.
 Data use analysis. Detects uninitialised
variables, variables written twice without an
intervening assignment, variables which are
declared but never used, etc.
 Interface analysis. Checks the consistency of
routine and procedure declarations and their
use
Stages of static analysis
 Information flow analysis. Identifies the
dependencies of output variables. Does not
detect anomalies itself but highlights
information for code inspection or review
 Path analysis. Identifies paths through the program
and sets out the statements executed in that path.
Again, potentially useful in the review process
 Both these stages generate vast amounts of
information. They must be used with care.
LINT static analysis
138% more lint_ex.c
#include <stdio.h>
printarray (Anarray)
int Anarray;
{ printf(“%d”,Anarray); }

main ()
{
int Anarray[5]; int i; char c;
printarray (Anarray, i, c);
printarray (Anarray) ;
}

139% cc lint_ex.c
140% lint lint_ex.c

lint_ex.c(10): warning: c may be used before set

lint_ex.c(10): warning: i may be used before set
printarray: variable # of args. lint_ex.c(4) :: lint_ex.c(10)
printarray, arg. 1 used inconsistently lint_ex.c(4) :: lint_ex.c(10)
printarray, arg. 1 used inconsistently lint_ex.c(4) :: lint_ex.c(11)
printf returns value which is always ignored
Use of static analysis
 Particularly valuable when a language such as C is used
which has weak typing and hence many errors are
undetected by the compiler,
 Less cost-effective for languages like Java that have
strong type checking and can therefore detect many
errors during compilation.
Verification and formal methods
 Formal methods can be used when a mathematical
specification of the system is produced.
 They are the ultimate static verification technique.
 They involve detailed mathematical analysis of the
specification and may develop formal arguments that a
program conforms to its mathematical specification.
Arguments for formal methods
 Producing a mathematical specification requires a
detailed analysis of the requirements and this is likely
to uncover errors.
 They can detect implementation errors before testing
when the program is analysed alongside the
specification.
Arguments against formal methods
 Require specialised notations that cannot be
understood by domain experts.
 Very expensive to develop a specification and even
more expensive to show that a program meets that
specification.
 It may be possible to reach the same level of
confidence in a program more cheaply using other V &
V techniques.
Cleanroom software development
 The name is derived from the 'Cleanroom'
process in semiconductor fabrication. The
philosophy is defect avoidance rather than
defect removal.
 This software development process is based on:
 Incremental development;
 Formal specification;
 Static verification using correctness arguments;
 Statistical testing to determine program reliability.
The Cleanroom process

For mall y Error rewor k

specify
system

Define Construct For mall y

Integ rate
softw ar e structur ed verify
increment
increments program code

Develop
oper ational Design Test
profile sta tistical integ rated
tests system
Cleanroom process characteristics
 Formal specification using a state transition model.
 Incremental development where the customer
prioritises increments.
 Structured programming - limited control and
abstraction constructs are used in the program.
 Static verification using rigorous inspections.
 Statistical testing of the system (covered in Ch. 24).
Formal specification and inspections
 The state based model is a system specification and
the inspection process checks the program against this
mode.l
 The programming approach is defined so that the
correspondence between the model and the system is
clear.
 Mathematical arguments (not proofs) are used to
increase confidence in the inspection process.
Cleanroom process teams
 Specification team. Responsible for developing
and maintaining the system specification.
 Development team. Responsible for
developing and verifying the software. The
software is NOT executed or even compiled
during this process.
 Certification team. Responsible for developing
a set of statistical tests to exercise the software
after development. Reliability growth models
used to determine when reliability is acceptable.
Cleanroom process evaluation
 The results of using the Cleanroom process have been very
impressive with few discovered faults in delivered systems.
 Independent assessment shows that the
process is no more expensive than other
approaches.
 There were fewer errors than in a 'traditional' development
process.
 However, the process is not widely used. It is not clear how
this approach can be transferred
to an environment with less skilled or less
motivated software engineers.
Key points
 Verification and validation are not the same thing.
Verification shows conformance with specification;
validation shows that the program meets the
customer’s needs.
 Test plans should be drawn up to guide the testing
process.
 Static verification techniques involve examination and
analysis of the program for error detection.
Key points
 Program inspections are very effective in discovering errors.
 Program code in inspections is systematically checked by a
small team to locate software faults.
 Static analysis tools can discover program anomalies which
may be an indication of faults in the code.
 The Cleanroom development process depends on
incremental development, static verification and statistical
testing.