In this report we present the results from a comparative evaluation of five combination strategies. Combination strategies are test case selection methods that combine "interesting values of the input parameters of a test object to form test cases. One of the investigated combination strategies, namely the Each Choice strategy, satisfies 1-wise coverage, i.e., each interesting value of each parameter is represented at least once in the test suite. Two of the strategies, the Orthogonal Arrays and Heuristic Pair-Wise strategies both satisfy pair-wise coverage, i.e., every possible pair of interesting values of any two parameters are included in the test suite. The fourth combination strategy, the All Values strategy, generates all possible combinations of the interesting values of the input parameters. The fifth and last combination strategy, the Base Choice combination strategy, satisfies 1-wise coverage but in addition makes use of some semantic information to construct the test cases.Except for the All Values strategy, which is only used as a reference point with respect to the number of test cases, the combination strategies are evaluated and compared with respect to number of test cases, number of faults found, test suite failure density, and achieved decision coverage in an experiment comprising five programs, similar to Unix commands, seeded with 131 faults.As expected, the Each Choice strategy finds the smallest number of faults among the evaluated combination strategies. Surprisingly, the Base Choice strategy performs as well, in terms of detecting faults, as the pair-wise combination strategies, despite fewer test cases. Since the programs and faults in our experiment may not be representative of actual testing problems in an industrial * Department of Computer Science, University of Skövde, email: {magr,birgitta,sten}@ida.his.se † Department of Information and Software Systems Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA, email: ofut@isse.gmu.edu 1 setting, we cannot draw any general conclusions regarding the number of faults detected by the evaluated combination strategies. However, our analysis shows some properties of the combination strategies that appear significant in spite of the programs and faults not being representative. The two most important results are that the Each Choice strategy is unpredictable in terms of which faults will be detected, i.e., most faults found are found by chance, and that the Base Choice and the pair-wise combination strategies to some extent target different types of faults.2
Testers often represent systems under test in input parameter models. These contain parameters with associated values. Combinations of parameter values, with one value for each parameter, are potential test cases. In most models, some values of two or more parameters cannot be combined. Testers must then detect and avoid or remove these conflicts.This paper proposes two new methods for automatically handling such conflicts and compares these with two existing methods, based on the sizes of the final conflict-free test suites. A test suite reduction method, usable with three of the four investigated methods is also included in the study, resulting in seven studied conflict handling methods.In the experiment, the number and types of conflicts, as well as the size of the input parameter model and the coverage criterion used, are varied. All in all, 3854 test suites with a total of 929, 158 test cases were generated.Two methods stand out as tractable and complementary. The best method (called the avoid methods) with respect to test suite size is to avoid selection of test cases with conflicts. However, this method cannot always be used. The second best method (called the replace method), removing conflicts from the final test suite, is completely general.
This workshop paper presents lessons learned from a recent experiment to compare several test strategies. The test strategies were compared in terms of the number of tests needed to satisfy them and in terms of faults found. The experimental design and conduct are discussed, and frank assessments of the decisions that were made are provided. The paper closes with a summary of the lessons that were learned.
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