This thesis reports on the investigation of the effectiveness of software testing on
embedded systems. The aim was to improve confidence in the current methods
employed or to find new methods which could improve the hit rate of defects found
before software is sent to a customer. We investigate previous work into software
testing effectives and various black box testing methods. There are various Black Box
testing methodologies that can be employed to detect errors in systems with varying
degrees of success. In this thesis we investigate the transformation of the white box
testing technique of Definition Use (DU) Path testing using a RESOLVE like
specification, to be applied as black box test method. We do not use RESOLVE it
self, instead we defined our own method of automatic test generation based on the
principles of RESOLVE. Then we compare this method to more commonly used
requirements driven test selection, and pure boundary value analysis (BVA) testing
techniques. The results reported in this thesis indicate that BVA and DU test selection
methods create tests that are covered by unit and integration tests. The current
requirements driven test cases create tests with a combination of features working in
tandem. It was found that combination of features was more likely to find defects
because developers tests had a lesser focus on this area. The tests generated by the
BVA and DU test selection methods did not find any defects that their respective
methods were intended to find. This is due to the development team already having
tests that covered these areas and defects had been fixed before system tests could be
run. Based on the fact that the current test selection methods find defects and the
methods we investigated do not, this adds confidence that the system test approach to
testing is effective. The investigation of defects found showed that timing related
errors are common and that a test selection method designed to find timing related
defects would be worth investigating. The investigation also revealed a useful method
in automatic generation of test cases. The RESOLVE like specification was used to
apply a DU testing as a black box test method. This method showed to be more time
efficient at generating test cases than the existing requirements driven approach.
Although the test cases did not reveal significant defects, due to the overlap with
integration testing, it could be a useful method for developers to generate test cases
