Reachability testing: An approach to testing concurrent software

Concurrent programs are more difficult to test than sequential programs because of nondeterministic behavior. An execution of a concurrent program nondeterministically exercises a sequence of synchronization events, called a synchronization sequence (or SYN-sequence). Nondeterministic testing of a concurrent program P is to execute P with a given input many times in order to exercise distinct SYN-sequences and produce different results. We present a new testing approach, called reachability testing. If P with input X contains a finite number of SYN-sequences, reachability testing of P with input X can execute all possible SYN-sequences of P with input X. We show how to perform reachability testing of concurrent programs using read and write operations. Also, we present results of empirical studies comparing reachability and nondeterministic testing. Our results indicate that reachability testing has advantages over nondeterministic testing.