TAXONOMY OF BUGS (Classification of bugs)

CONSEQUENCES OF BUGS (Effects of bugs)

IMPORTANCE OF BUGS:

 The importance of bugs depends on frequency, correction cost, installation cost, and consequences.
1. Frequency: How often does that kind of bug occur? Pay more attention to the more frequent bug
types.
2. Correction Cost: What does it cost to correct the bug after it is found? The cost is the sum of 2 factors:
(1) the cost of discovery (2) the cost of correction. These costs go up dramatically later in the
development cycle when the bug is discovered. Correction cost also depends on system size.
3. Installation Cost: Installation cost depends on the number of installations: small for a single user
program but more for distributed systems. Fixing one bug and distributing the fix could exceed the entire
system's development cost.
4. Consequences: What are the consequences of the bug? Bug consequences can range from mild to
catastrophic.

A reasonable metric for bug importance is

Importance= ($) = Frequence * (Correction cost + Installation cost + Consequential

cost)

CONSEQUENCES OF BUGS:

 The consequences of a bug can be measure in terms of human rather than machine. Some consequences of a
bug on a scale of one to ten are:
1. Mild: The symptoms of the bug offend us aesthetically (gently); a misspelled output or a misaligned
printout.
2. Moderate: Outputs are misleading or redundant. The bug impacts the system's performance.
3. Annoying: The system's behavior because of the bug is dehumanizing. E.g. Names are truncated
orarbitarily modified.
4. Disturbing: It refuses to handle legitimate (authorized / legal) transactions. The ATM wont give you
money. My credit card is declared invalid.
5. Serious: It loses track of its transactions. Not just the transaction itself but the fact that the
transaction occurred. Accountability is lost.
6. Very Serious: The bug causes the system to do the wrong transactions. Instead of losing your
paycheck, the system credits it to another account or converts deposits to withdrawals.
7. Extreme: The problems aren't limited to a few users or to few transaction types. They are frequent
and arbitrary instead of sporadic infrequent) or for unusual cases.
 8. Intolerable: Long term unrecoverable corruption of the database occurs and the corruption is not
easily discovered. Serious consideration is given to shutting the system down.
9. Catastrophic: The decision to shut down is taken out of our hands because the system fails.
10. Infectious: What can be worse than a failed system? One that corrupt other systems even though it
does not fall in itself ; that erodes the social physical environment; that melts nuclear reactors and
starts war.

FLEXIBLE SEVERITY RATHER THAN ABSOLUTES:

o Quality can be measured as a combination of factors, of which number of bugs and their severity is only
one component.
o Many organizations have designed and used satisfactory, quantitative, quality metrics.
o Because bugs and their symptoms play a significant role in such metrics, as testing progresses, you
see the quality rise to a reasonable value which is deemed to be safe to ship the product.
o The factors involved in bug severity are:
1. Correction Cost: Not so important because catastrophic bugs may be corrected easier and
small bugs may take major time to debug.
2. Context and Application Dependency: Severity depends on the context and the
application in which it is used.
3. Creating Culture Dependency: What’s important depends on the creators of software and
their cultural aspirations. Test tool vendors are more sensitive about bugs in their software
then games software vendors.
4. User Culture Dependency: Severity also depends on user culture. Naive users of PC
software go crazy over bugs whereas pros (experts) may just ignore.
5. The software development phase: Severity depends on development phase. Any bugs
gets more severe as it gets closer to field use and more severe the longer it has been
around.

TAXONOMY OF BUGS : (Classification of bugs)

 There is no universally correct way categorize bugs. The taxonomy is not rigid.
 A given bug can be put into one or another category depending on its history and the programmer's state of mind.
 Bug Definitions: It refers to fault/error in the program code that caused the malfunctioning and the desired
output is not reached.
 The major categories are:

(1) Requirements, Features and Functionality Bugs

(2) Structural Bugs
(3) Data Bugs
(4) Coding Bugs
(5) Interface, Integration and System Bugs
(6) Test and Test Design Bugs.
 REQUIREMENTS, FEATURES AND FUNCTIONALITY BUGS:

Various categories in Requirements, Features and Functionality bugs include:

1. Requirements and Specifications Bugs:
 Requirements and specifications developed from them can be incomplete ambiguous, or self-
contradictory. They can be misunderstood or impossible to understand.
 The specifications that don't have flaws in them may change while the design is in progress. The
features are added, modified and deleted.
 Requirements, especially, as expressed in specifications are a major source of expensive bugs.
 The range is from a few percentage to more than 50%, depending on the application and
environment.
 What hurts most about the bugs is that they are the earliest to invade the system and the last to
leave.
2. Feature Bugs:
 Specification problems usually create corresponding feature problems.
 A feature can be wrong, missing, or superfluous (serving no useful purpose). A missing feature or
case is easier to detect and correct. A wrong feature could have deep design implications.
 Removing the features might complicate the software, consume more resources, and foster more
bugs.
3. Feature Interaction Bugs:
 Providing correct, clear, implementable and testable feature specifications is not enough.
 Features usually come in groups or related features. The features of each group and the interaction
of features with in the group are usually well tested.
 The problem is unpredictable interactions between feature groups or even between individual
features. For example, your telephone is provided with call holding and call forwarding. The
interactions between these two features may have bugs.
 Every application has its peculiar set of features and a much bigger set of unspecified feature
interaction potentials and therefore result in feature interaction bugs.
Specification and Feature Bug Remedies:
o Most feature bugs are rooted in human to human communication problems. One solution is to use high-
level, formal specification languages or systems.
o Such languages and systems provide short term support but in the long run, does not solve the problem.
o Short term Support: Specification languages facilitate formalization of requirements and inconsistency and
ambiguity analysis.
o Long term Support: Assume that we have a great specification language and that can be used to create
unambiguous, complete specifications with unambiguous complete tests and consistent test criteria.
o The specification problem has been shifted to a higher level but not eliminated.

Testing Techniques for functional bugs:

Most functional test techniques- that is those techniques which are based on a behavioral description of software,
such as transaction flow testing, syntax testing, domain testing, logic testing and state testing are useful in testing
functional bugs.
 STRUCTURAL BUGS:

Various categories in Structural bugs include:

0. Control and Sequence Bugs:
 Control and sequence bugs include paths left out, unreachable code, improper nesting of loops, loop-
back or loop termination criteria incorrect, missing process steps, duplicated processing,
unnecessary processing, rampaging, GOTO's, ill-conceived (not properly planned) switches, spaghetti
code, and worst of all, pachinko code.
 One reason for control flow bugs is that this area is amenable (supportive) to theoretical treatment.
 Most of the control flow bugs are easily tested and caught in unit testing.
 Another reason for control flow bugs is that use of old code especially ALP & COBOL code are
dominated by control flow bugs.
 Control and sequence bugs at all levels are caught by testing, especially structural testing, more
specifically path testing combined with a bottom line functional test based on a specification.
1. Logic Bugs:
 Bugs in logic, especially those related to misunderstanding how case statements and logic operators
behave singly and combinations
 Also includes evaluation of Boolean expressions in deeply nested IF-THEN-ELSE constructs.
 If the bugs are parts of logical (i.e. Boolean) processing not related to control flow, they are
characterized as processing bugs.
 If the bugs are parts of a logical expression (i.e control-flow statement) which is used to direct the
control flow, then they are categorized as control-flow bugs.
2. Processing Bugs:
 Processing bugs include arithmetic bugs, algebraic, mathematical function evaluation, algorithm
selection and general processing.
 Examples of Processing bugs include: Incorrect conversion from one data representation to other,
ignoring overflow, improper use of greater-than-or-equal etc
 Although these bugs are frequent (12%), they tend to be caught in good unit testing.
3. Initialization Bugs:
 Initialization bugs are common. Initialization bugs can be improper and superfluous.
 Superfluous bugs are generally less harmful but can affect performance.
 Typical initialization bugs include: Forgetting to initialize the variables before first use, assuming that
they are initialized elsewhere, initializing to the wrong format, representation or type etc
 Explicit declaration of all variables, as in Pascal, can reduce some initialization problems.
4. Data-Flow Bugs and Anomalies:
 Most initialization bugs are special case of data flow anomalies.
 A data flow anomaly occurs where there is a path along which we expect to do something
unreasonable with data, such as using an uninitialized variable, attempting to use a variable before
it exists, modifying and then not storing or using the result, or initializing twice without an
intermediate use.

 DATA BUGS:

o Data bugs include all bugs that arise from the specification of data objects, their formats, the number of such
objects, and their initial values.
o Data Bugs are at least as common as bugs in code, but they are often treated as if they did not exist at all.
o Code migrates data: Software is evolving towards programs in which more and more of the control and
processing functions are stored in tables.
o Because of this, there is an increasing awareness that bugs in code are only half the battle and the data
problems should be given equal attention.
 o Dynamic Data Vs Static data:
 Dynamic data are transitory. Whatever their purpose their lifetime is relatively short, typically the
processing time of one transaction. A storage object may be used to hold dynamic data of different
types, with different formats, attributes and residues.
 Dynamic data bugs are due to leftover garbage in a shared resource. This can be handled in one of
the three ways: (1) Clean up after the use by the user (2) Common Cleanup by the resource manager
(3) No Clean up
 Static Data are fixed in form and content. They appear in the source code or database directly or
indirectly, for example a number, a string of characters, or a bit pattern.
 Compile time processing will solve the bugs caused by static data.
o Information, parameter, and control: Static or dynamic data can serve in one of three roles, or in
combination of roles: as a parameter, for control, or for information.
o Content, Structure and Attributes: Content can be an actual bit pattern, character string, or number put into
a data structure. Content is a pure bit pattern and has no meaning unless it is interpreted by a hardware or
software processor. All data bugs result in the corruption or misinterpretation of content. Structure relates
to the size, shape and numbers that describe the data object, that is memory location used to store the
content. (e.g A two dimensional array). Attributes relates to the specification meaning that is the semantics
associated with the contents of a data object. (e.g. an integer, an alphanumeric string, a subroutine). The
severity and subtlety of bugs increases as we go from content to attributes because the things get less formal
in that direction.

 CODING BUGS:

o Coding errors of all kinds can create any of the other kind of bugs.
o Syntax errors are generally not important in the scheme of things if the source language translator has
adequate syntax checking.
o If a program has many syntax errors, then we should expect many logic and coding bugs.
o The documentation bugs are also considered as coding bugs which may mislead the maintenance
programmers.

 INTERFACE, INTEGRATION, AND SYSTEM BUGS:

o Various categories of bugs in Interface, Integration, and System Bugs are:

1. External Interfaces:
 The external interfaces are the means used to communicate with the world.
 These include devices, actuators, sensors, input terminals, printers, and communication lines.
 The primary design criterion for an interface with outside world should be robustness.
 All external interfaces, human or machine should employ a protocol. The protocol may be wrong or
incorrectly implemented.
 Other external interface bugs are: invalid timing or sequence assumptions related to external signals
 Misunderstanding external input or output formats.
 Insufficient tolerance to bad input data.
2. Internal Interfaces:
 Internal interfaces are in principle not different from external interfaces but they are more controlled.
 A best example for internal interfaces are communicating routines.
 The external environment is fixed and the system must adapt to it but the internal environment, which
consists of interfaces with other components, can be negotiated.
 Internal interfaces have the same problem as external interfaces.
3. Hardware Architecture:
 Bugs related to hardware architecture originate mostly from misunderstanding how the hardware works.
  Examples of hardware architecture bugs: address generation error, i/o device operation / instruction error,
waiting too long for a response, incorrect interrupt handling etc.
 The remedy for hardware architecture and interface problems is two fold: (1) Good Programming and Testing
(2) Centralization of hardware interface software in programs written by hardware interface specialists.
4. Operating System Bugs:
 Program bugs related to the operating system are a combination of hardware architecture and interface bugs
mostly caused by a misunderstanding of what it is the operating system does.
 Use operating system interface specialists, and use explicit interface modules or macros for all operating
system calls.
 This approach may not eliminate the bugs but at least will localize them and make testing easier.
5. Software Architecture:
 Software architecture bugs are the kind that called - interactive.
 Routines can pass unit and integration testing without revealing such bugs.
 Many of them depend on load, and their symptoms emerge only when the system is stressed.
 Sample for such bugs: Assumption that there will be no interrupts, Failure to block or un block interrupts,
Assumption that memory and registers were initialized or not initialized etc
 Careful integration of modules and subjecting the final system to a stress test are effective methods for these
bugs.
6. Control and Sequence Bugs (Systems Level):
 These bugs include: Ignored timing, Assuming that events occur in a specified sequence, Working on data
before all the data have arrived from disc, Waiting for an impossible combination of prerequisites, Missing,
wrong, redundant or superfluous process steps.
 The remedy for these bugs is highly structured sequence control.
 Specialize, internal, sequence control mechanisms are helpful.
7. Resource Management Problems:
 Memory is subdivided into dynamically allocated resources such as buffer blocks, queue blocks, task control
blocks, and overlay buffers.
 External mass storage units such as discs, are subdivided into memory resource pools.
 Some resource management and usage bugs: Required resource not obtained, Wrong resource used,
Resource is already in use, Resource dead lock etc
 Resource Management Remedies: A design remedy that prevents bugs is always preferable to a test method
that discovers them.
 The design remedy in resource management is to keep the resource structure simple: the fewest different
kinds of resources, the fewest pools, and no private resource management.
8. Integration Bugs:
 Integration bugs are bugs having to do with the integration of, and with the interfaces between, working and
tested components.
 These bugs results from inconsistencies or incompatibilities between components.
 The communication methods include data structures, call sequences, registers, semaphores, and
communication links and protocols results in integration bugs.
 The integration bugs do not constitute a big bug category (9%) they are expensive category because they are
usually caught late in the game and because they force changes in several components and/or data
structures.
9. System Bugs:
 System bugs covering all kinds of bugs that cannot be ascribed to a component or to their simple interactions,
but result from the totality of interactions between many components such as programs, data, hardware,
and the operating systems.
 There can be no meaningful system testing until there has been thorough component and integration testing.
 System bugs are infrequent (1.7%) but very important because they are often found only after the system
has been fielded.
 TEST AND TEST DESIGN BUGS:

 Testing: testers have no immunity to bugs. Tests require complicated scenarios and databases.
 They require code or the equivalent to execute and consequently they can have bugs.
 Test criteria: if the specification is correct, it is correctly interpreted and implemented, and a proper test has
been designed; but the criterion by which the software's behavior is judged may be incorrect or impossible.
So, a proper test criteria has to be designed. The more complicated the criteria, the likelier they are to have
bugs.
 Remedies: The remedies of test bugs are:
1. Test Debugging: The first remedy for test bugs is testing and debugging the tests. Test debugging,
when compared to program debugging, is easier because tests, when properly designed are simpler than
programs and do not have to make concessions to efficiency.
2. Test Quality Assurance: Programmers have the right to ask how quality in independent testing is
monitored.
3. Test Execution Automation: The history of software bug removal and prevention is indistinguishable
from the history of programming automation aids. Assemblers, loaders, compilers are developed to reduce
the incidence of programming and operation errors. Test execution bugs are virtually eliminated by various
test execution automation tools.
4. Test Design Automation: Just as much of software development has been automated, much test
design can be and has been automated. For a given productivity rate, automation reduces the bug count -
be it for software or be it for tests.