The π measure

A novel software measure, called the pi measure, used for evaluating the fault-detection effectiveness of test sets, for measuring test-case independence and for measuring code complexity is proposed. The pi measure is interpreted as a degree of run-time control and data difference at the code level, resulting from executing a program on a set of test cases. Unlike other well-known static and dynamic complexity measures, the pi measure is an execution measure, computed using only run-time information. The Diversity Analyzer computes the pi measure for programs written in C, C++, C# and VB in .NET. The experimental data presented here show a correlation between the pi measure, test case independence and fault-detection rates.