At first, MC/DC sounds very similar to the name of an Australian rock band – in fact, the abbreviation MC/DC stands for a complicated software metric that can provide information about the completeness of the test coverage in relation to coding structure. MC/DC stands for “Modified Condition / Decision Coverage” and the use of this metric is highly recommended for ASIL D projects in ISO 26262.
In the last weeks, we had posted a LinkedIn poll about MC/DC coverage based on a simple and an advanced example. The question was how many test cases are at least necessary to reach full coverage; to meet the target MC/DC=100%. For the easy example, the success rate was >50% among participants. For the advanced example, merely 1/3 of the participants were still able to give the correct answer.
This shows two things:
1. Software metrics are not that easy to understand.
2. Finding the right solution straight away is time consuming and sometimes very complicated.
At Piketec we have recognized this and want to help our customers to meet the required metrics easily and quickly. To achieve this we have included two cool MC/DC features in TPT 18 – to be released in Q2/2022
1. Measuring MC/DC coverage for C/C++ and Simulink/Targetlink: so you always have the overview.
2. Automatic test case generation with TPT: this way you can quickly and easily bring your coverage to 100%.
We have adapted the algorithms so that we need as few test cases as possible for MC/DC. This saves you time and money several times over, because you don’t have to create the test cases yourself. You only have to execute and maintain a minimum number of test cases. Furthermore, you save the purchase of an additional measurement tool to determine the coverage.