VERSITY OF HOUSTON
                 DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE



  In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
                      Master of Science



                       Troy P. LeBlanc
                    will defend his thesis



     Selection of Test Cases To Cost-Effectively reduce the 
       Risk of Failure of a Rule-Based Scheduling Engine



                         Abstract

The scheduling of operations aboard the International Space Station 
is to be accomplished by planning personnel at the National Aeronautics 
and Space Administration (NASA) Johnson Space Center (JSC) using an 
application called the Consolidated Planning System (CPS).  At the heart 
of this software system is an automatic scheduling engine which will be 
utilized to establish the weekly activities of the astronauts.  The 
original engine was capable of performing forward path scheduling only. 
The latest version of the software has been updated to include forward, 
backward, middle and flexible path scheduling methods.  The number of 
possible inputs to this software are prohibitively large to allow an i
exhaustive test to assess the risk of failure.  The work reported in 
this thesis is the identification of a set of test cases that reduce 
the risk of failure and maximizes the benefit of testing.




             Date : Wednesday, February 3, 1999
                     Time: 10:00 a.m.
                      Place: 550-PGH


     Faculty, students, and the general public are invited.
               Thesis Advisor: Dr. J.C. Huang