MC/DC

Modified Condition/Decision Coverage software testing criterion

• Standards
• Reports (NASA, FAA, Boeing)
• Journal and conference papers
• Presentations at FAA Software Conferences
• Particular aspects connected with MC/DC
• Tools
• Miscellaneous

  All documents are arranged in chronological order.

Standards

1. RTCA/DO-178B. Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification, RTCA, Washington D.C., USA, 1992.
   • The Software Productivity Consortium's description of DO-178B
   • ESSI-SCOPE's description of DO-178B
   
   
2. RTCA/DO-248B. Final Annual Report for Clarification of DO-178B "Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification".
   • DO 248B Overview.
   
   
3. RTCA/DO-278. Guidelines for CNS/ATM Systems Software Integrity Assurance.
   • K. Hayhurst, C. M. Holloway, "Aviation Software Guidelines", IEEE Software, Volume 19, Number 5, Sep/Oct 2002 (The full text is available via IEEE Xplore).
   
   

   Reports (NASA, FAA, Boeing)

4. J. J. Chilenski and L. A. Richey, Definition for a Masking form of Modified Condition Decision Coverage (MCDC), Boeing Report, December 1997, 42 pp. (, 146K).
   
   
5. K. J. Hayhurst, C. A. Dorsey, J. C. Knight, N. G. Leveson and G. F. McCormick, Streamlining Software Aspects of Certification: Report on the SSAC Survey , Report NASA/TM-1999-209519, August 1999, 100 pp. (, 583K).
   
   
6. J. J. Chilenski, An Investigation of Three Forms of the Modified Condition Decision Coverage (MCDC) Criterion, Report DOT/FAA/AR-01/18, April 2001, 214 pp. (, 884K).
   
   
7. K. J. Hayhurst, D. S. Veerhusen, J. J. Chilenski, and L. K. Rierson, A Practical Tutorial on Modified Condition/Decision Coverage, Report NASA/TM-2001-210876, NASA, USA, May 2001 (, 569K).
   
   
8. FAA Certification Authorities Software Team (CAST), Position Paper CAST-6, Rationale for Accepting Masking MC/DC in Certification Projects, Completed August, 2001.
   
   
9. FAA Certification Authorities Software Team (CAST), Position Paper CAST-10, What is a “Decision” in Application of Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC) and Decision Coverage (DC)? , Completed June 2002.
   
   

   Journal and conference papers

10. J.J. Chilenski and S.P. Miller, Applicability of Modified Condition/Decision Coverage to Software Testing, Software Engineering Journal, Volume 9, Issue 5, September 1994, pp. 193-200.
    • The full text is available via IEEE Xplore
    
    
11. J. J. Chilenski and P. H. Newcomb, Formal Specification Tools for Test Coverage Analysis, Proceedings of the Ninth Knowledge-Based Software Engineering Conference (KBSE'94), Monterey, CA, USA, September 20-23 1994, pp. 59-68.
    • The full text is available via IEEE Xplore
    
    
12. R. Jasper, M. Brennan, K. Williamson, B. Currier, and D. Zimmerman, Test data generation and feasible path analysis, Proceedings of the 1994 International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, Seattle, WA, USA, August 17-19, 1994, pp. 95-107 (, 995K).
    • The full text is also available via ACM Portal to Computing Literature
    
    
13. Y.Y. Li, Structural test cases analysis and implementation. 42nd Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS'99), New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, USA, 8-11 August, 1999, Volume 2, pp. 882-885.
    • The full text is available via IEEE Xplore
    
    
14. D. Kuhn, Fault Classes and Error Detection Capability of Specification-Based Testing, ACM Transactions On Software Engineering and Methodology, Vol. 8, No. 4, October 1999, pp. 411-424 (PostScript file , 129K).
    
    
15. A. Dupuy and N. Leveson, An empirical evaluation of the MC/DC coverage criterion on the HETE-2 satellite software. Proceedings of the Digital Aviation Systems Conference (DASC), Philadelphia, USA, October 2000 (, 65K).
    
    
16. A. L. White, Comments on Modified Condition/Decision Coverage for Software Testing, 2001 IEEE Aerospace Conference Proceedings, 10-17 March 2001, Big Sky, Montana, USA, volume 6, pp. 2821-2828.
    • The full text is available via IEEE Xplore
    
    
17. S. Rayadurgam and M. Heimdahl, Coverage based test-case generation using model checkers, Proceedings of the Eighth Annual IEEE International Conference and Worfshop on Engineering of Computer Based Systems (ECBS 2001 ), 17-20 April 2001, Washington, D.C., USA, pp. 83-91.
    • Abstract
    • The full text is available via IEEE Xplore
    
    
18. S. A. Vilkomir and J. P. Bowen. Formalization of software testing criteria using the Z notation, Proceedings of COMPSAC 2001: 25th IEEE Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 8--12 October 2001. IEEE Computer Society Press, 2001, pp. 351-356 (, 473K; PostScript file, 76K).
    
    
19. K. J. Hayhurst, D. S. Veerhusen, A Practical Approach to Modified Condition/Decision Coverage, 20th Digital Avionics Systems Conference ( DASC), Daytona Beach, Florida, USA, October 14-18, 2001, Vol. 1, pp. 1B2/1-1B2/10.
    • The full text is available via IEEE Xplore
    
    
20. S. A. Vilkomir and J. P. Bowen. Reinforced Condition/Decision Coverage (RC/DC): A New Criterion for Software Testing, Proceedings of ZB2002: 2nd International Conference of Z and B Users, Grenoble, France, 23-25 January 2002. Didier Bert, Jonathan P. Bowen, Martin Henson and Ken Robinson (eds.). Springer-Verlag, LNCS 2272, 2002, pp. 295-313 ( , 149K)
    
    
21. J. Jones, M. Harrold, Test-Suite Reduction and Prioritization for Modified Condition/Decision Coverage, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Volume 29, Number 3, March 2003, pp. 195-209. (, 1.19 Mb).
    • The full text is also available via IEEE Xplore
    
    
22. A. Pretschner. Compositional Generation of MC/DC Integration Test Suites, Proc. TACoS'03, Warsaw, April 13, 2003. Published in Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science 82(6):1-11, 2003, Abstract
    
    
23. S. A. Vilkomir, K. Kapoor and J. P. Bowen. Tolerance of Control-Flow Testing Criteria, Proceedings of 27th IEEE Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference ( COMPSAC 2003), Dallas, Texas, USA, 3-6 November 2003. IEEE Computer Society Press, 2003, pp. 182-187 (PostScript file, 199K).
    
    
24. P.G. Bishop. MC/DC based estimation and detection of residual faults in PLC logic networks, In Supplementary Proceedings fourteenth International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE '03), Fast Abstracts, pp. 297-298, 17-20 November, Denver, Colorado, USA, 2003, , 56K)

    Presentations at FAA Software Conferences

25. M. DeWalt, MCDC, a blistering love/hate relationship, FAA National Software Conference, Long Beach, CA, USA, April 6-9, 1999 (Slides , 210K).
    
    
26. K. J. Hayhurst, Streamlining Software Aspects of Certification Program Overview, FAA National Software Conference, Seattle, WA, USA, August 8-11, 2000 (Slides , 548K).
    
    
27. C. Dorsey, Verification Within An RTCA DO-178B Framework, FAA National Software Conference, Seattle, WA, USA, August 8-11, 2000 (Slides , 3,4Mb).
    
    
28. K. J. Hayhurst, Masking MC/DC, FAA National Software Conference, Danvers, MA, USA, June 5-7, 2001 (Slides , 79K).
    
    
29. K. J. Hayhurst, L.Rierson and D. S. Veerhusen, MC/DC Tutorial, FAA National Software Conference, Danvers, MA, USA, June 5-7, 2001 (Slides , 606K).
    
    
30. K. J. Hayhurst and D. S. Veerhusen, Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC) Tutorial, FAA National Software Conference, Dallas, TX, USA, May 14-17 2002 (Slides , 209K).
    
    

    Particular aspects connected with MC/DC

31. S. Burton, Towards Automated Unit Testing of Statechart Implementations. Technical Report YCS319, Department of Computer Science, University of York, UK. September 1999 (, 5.05 Mb).
    
    
32. A. J. Offutt, Y. Xiong, and S. Liu, Criteria for generating specification-based tests. Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems (ICECCS'99), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, October 18-21, 1999, pp. 119-129 ( , 210K).
    
    
33. V. Cortellessa, B. Cukic, D. Del Gobbo, A. Mili, M. Shereshevsky, H. Sandhu, Certifying Adaptive Flight Control Software, ISACC 2000 - The Software Risk Management Conference, Reston, Virginia, USA, 25-26 September, 2000 (, 85K).
    
    
34. S. C. Reid, BS 7925-2: the software component testing standard, Proceedings of First Asia-Pacific Conference on Quality Software, Hong Kong, China, 30-31 October 2000, pp. 139 - 148.
    • The full text is available via IEEE Xplore
    
    
35. R. Chapman, Industrial Experience with SPARK. Proceedings of ACM SIGAda Annual International Conference (SIGAda 2000), November 12-16, 2000, Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, USA (, 33K).
    
    
36. J.A. McDermid and D.J. Pumfrey, Software Safety: Why is there no Consensus?. Proceedings of the 19th International System Safety Conference, Huntsville, AL, USA, September 10-14, 2001 (, 114K).
    
    
37. A. Gargantini, E. Riccobene, ASM-based Testing: Coverage Criteria and Automatic Test Sequence Generation, Journal of Universal Computer Science, Volume 10, Number 8, November 2001, (, 164K).
    
    

    Tools

38. AdaTEST
    
    
39. ATTOL Coverage
    
    
40. BEACON Tester
    
    
41. Cantata++
    
    
42. CodeTEST
    • Metrowerks CodeTEST Modified Condition/Decision Coverage (MC/DC)
    
    
43. CTC++
    
    
44. C++Test
    
    
45. DACS-Object Coverage tools
    • MC/DC and the DACS Object Coverage
    
    
46. G-COVER Object Code Analyzer
    
    
47. LDRA Testbed
    • DO-178B Certification with LDRA Testbed
    • MC/DC with LDRA Testbed
    
    
48. Logiscope TestChecker
    
    
49. Rational TestMate
    
    
    • Rational TestMate Code Coverage Analysis
    
    
50. Rational Test RealTime
    
    
51. Simulink Performance Tools 1.1.1
    
    
52. VectorCAST/Cover
    
    
53. VEROCODE
    
    

    Miscellaneous

54. MCDC Standard Effort - IEEE P1506, (May 1998)
    
    
55. MCDC, a FAA Interactive Video Teletraining Course
    
    
56. Alexander Theel's page, (Germ., 1998)