PISCES: a tool for predicting software testability

Before a program can fail, a software fault must be executed, that execution must alter the data state, and the incorrect data state must propagate to state that results directly in an incorrect output. This paper describes a tool called PISCES (developed by Reliable Software Technologies Corporation) for predicting the probability that faults in a particular program location will accomplish all three of these steps causing program failure. PISCES is a tool that is used during software verification and validation to predict a program's testability. >