What is the purpose of the AllowUndeterminedCoverage switch?

Question

Hi I'm playing around with a stochastic model - which by the way is really cool that Spec Explorer supports this!

To generate tests from my stochastic model I need to specify the AllowUndeterminedCoverage = true switch. But I have a hard time figuring out why I need to do that? I can't really imagine any stochastic model where you would get deterministic coverage.

Wouldn't I always have to set the flag, and if so, then what is the point in setting it?

Just curious.

-Simon

Answer 1

Hi Simon,

The switch "AllowUndeterminedCoverage" was added based on the concern that, when a traversal covers certain branches/requirements, people may take it for granted that after tests are executed, those branches/requirements are covered. This is not true when there's non-determinism in the transition system, as SUT may have implementation non-determinism which results in never covering certain choices in the system. Setting "AllowUndeterminedCoverage" means you explicitly acknowledge that you're aware of such issue and would like to proceed with testing that way :).

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Thanks, Yiming