Coverage Testing and Reliability Improvement: A Marriage of Convenience?

Software testing can be driven by different criteria, among which code coverage and usage profile are widely used. The former aims at exercising as much as possible the program elements (e.g., the statements), the latter aims at increasing the predicted reliability in operation. The question whether there is any correlation between these two goals remains still open. On the other side, the relations between the two research fields are loose. In this talk I will discuss about potential ways and benefits of combining the two testing approaches, advocating the convenience of a tighter relationship.