Aggregate-strength interaction test suite prioritization

Combinatorial interaction testing is a widely used approach. In testing, it is often assumed that all combinatorial test cases have equal fault detection capability, however it has been shown that the execution order of an interaction test suite's test cases may be critical, especially when the...

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Main Authors: Huang, Rubing, Chen, Jinfu, Towey, Dave, Chan, Alvin T.S., Lu, Yansheng
Format: Article
Published: Elsevier 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51753/
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author Huang, Rubing
Chen, Jinfu
Towey, Dave
Chan, Alvin T.S.
Lu, Yansheng
author_facet Huang, Rubing
Chen, Jinfu
Towey, Dave
Chan, Alvin T.S.
Lu, Yansheng
author_sort Huang, Rubing
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Combinatorial interaction testing is a widely used approach. In testing, it is often assumed that all combinatorial test cases have equal fault detection capability, however it has been shown that the execution order of an interaction test suite's test cases may be critical, especially when the testing resources are limited. To improve testing cost-effectiveness, test cases in the interaction test suite can be prioritized, and one of the best-known categories of prioritization approaches is based on “fixed-strength prioritization”, which prioritizes an interaction test suite by choosing new test cases which have the highest uncovered interaction coverage at a fixed strength (level of interaction among parameters). A drawback of these approaches, however, is that, when selecting each test case, they only consider a fixed strength, not multiple strengths. To overcome this, we propose a new “aggregate-strength prioritization”, to combine interaction coverage at different strengths. Experimental results show that in most cases our method performs better than the test-case-generation, reverse test-case-generation, and random prioritization techniques. The method also usually outperforms “fixed-strength prioritization”, while maintaining a similar time cost.
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spelling nottingham-517532020-05-04T16:59:54Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51753/ Aggregate-strength interaction test suite prioritization Huang, Rubing Chen, Jinfu Towey, Dave Chan, Alvin T.S. Lu, Yansheng Combinatorial interaction testing is a widely used approach. In testing, it is often assumed that all combinatorial test cases have equal fault detection capability, however it has been shown that the execution order of an interaction test suite's test cases may be critical, especially when the testing resources are limited. To improve testing cost-effectiveness, test cases in the interaction test suite can be prioritized, and one of the best-known categories of prioritization approaches is based on “fixed-strength prioritization”, which prioritizes an interaction test suite by choosing new test cases which have the highest uncovered interaction coverage at a fixed strength (level of interaction among parameters). A drawback of these approaches, however, is that, when selecting each test case, they only consider a fixed strength, not multiple strengths. To overcome this, we propose a new “aggregate-strength prioritization”, to combine interaction coverage at different strengths. Experimental results show that in most cases our method performs better than the test-case-generation, reverse test-case-generation, and random prioritization techniques. The method also usually outperforms “fixed-strength prioritization”, while maintaining a similar time cost. Elsevier 2015-01-30 Article PeerReviewed Huang, Rubing, Chen, Jinfu, Towey, Dave, Chan, Alvin T.S. and Lu, Yansheng (2015) Aggregate-strength interaction test suite prioritization. Journal of Systems and Software, 99 . pp. 36-51. ISSN 0164-1212 Software testing; combinatorial interaction testing; test case prioritization; interaction coverage; fixed-strength prioritization; aggregate-strength prioritization;algorithm https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164121214001940 doi:10.1016/j.jss.2014.09.002 doi:10.1016/j.jss.2014.09.002
spellingShingle Software testing; combinatorial interaction testing; test case prioritization; interaction coverage; fixed-strength prioritization; aggregate-strength prioritization;algorithm
Huang, Rubing
Chen, Jinfu
Towey, Dave
Chan, Alvin T.S.
Lu, Yansheng
Aggregate-strength interaction test suite prioritization
title Aggregate-strength interaction test suite prioritization
title_full Aggregate-strength interaction test suite prioritization
title_fullStr Aggregate-strength interaction test suite prioritization
title_full_unstemmed Aggregate-strength interaction test suite prioritization
title_short Aggregate-strength interaction test suite prioritization
title_sort aggregate-strength interaction test suite prioritization
topic Software testing; combinatorial interaction testing; test case prioritization; interaction coverage; fixed-strength prioritization; aggregate-strength prioritization;algorithm
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51753/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51753/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51753/