Code Coverage Tool Reference Manual

HP Code Coverage Tool Reference Manual for HP Integrity NonStop NS-Series Servers—542684-004
8-1
8 Usage Scenario
The most obvious application of code coverage technology is for a quality assurance
group to determine what parts of a program were executed by some set of test runs.
The goal, in this case, is for the test suite to be as comprehensive as possible,
ensuring that the code has been well exercised before release to users.
In this scenario, one would typically rebuild the product, perform the test runs, and
generate the reports in quick succession, probably not retaining intermediate files for
very long, because the files become obsolete as soon as the source code changes. A
quality assurance group might go through this process once a month.
Figure 8-1 illustrates a typical scenario in which a group develops a software product,
establishes the code coverage provided by a set of test cases, runs an actual customer
use case or sample workload, and uses the coverage as a basis for enhancing the test
library.