One-test-at-a-time heuristic search for interaction test suites

Algorithms for the construction of software interaction test suites have focussed on the special case of pairwise coverage; less is known about efficiently constructing test suites for higher strength coverage. The combinatorial growth of t-tuples associated with higher strength hinders the efficacy of interaction testing. Test suites are inherently large, so testers may not run entire test suites. To address these problems, we combine a simple greedy algorithm with heuristic search to construct and dispense one test at a time. Our algorithm attempts to maximize the number of t-tuples covered by the earliest tests so that if a tester only runs a partial test suite, they test as many t-tuples as possible. Heuristic search is shown to provide effective methods for achieving such coverage. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.2.5 [Software Engineering]: Testing and Debugging— testing tools General Terms Algorithms, Measurement, Experimentation Keywords covering arrays, great flood, h...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: GECCO
• Authors: Renée C. Bryce, Charles J. Colbourn
• Keywords: GECCO 2007, Heuristic Search, Interaction Test Suites, Test Suite