Predicate Expression Cost Functions to Guide Evolutionary Search for Test Data

Abstract

Abstract. Several researchers are using evolutionary search methods to search for test data with which to test a program. The fitness or cost function depends on the test goal but almost invariably an important component of the cost function is an estimate of the cost of satisfying a predicate expression as might occur in branches, exception conditions, etc. This paper reviews the commonly used cost functions and points out some deficiencies. Alternative cost functions are proposed to overcome these deficiencies. The evidence from an experiment is that they are more reliable.

Using Genetic Algorithm as Test Data Generator for Stored PL/SQL Program Units

“…[15] if dummy = 'p' then [16] insert into …. [17] insurance_status :=7; [18] end if; [19] … [20] if insurance_status =7 then [21] update out_invoice [22] set … [23] end if; [24] when exit_proc then [25] if retrieved from pricing table, also in line 20 to execute branch to be true this happen only when line 12 is executed. In this case, where the target of the search is node 20 to be true, the fact that p_error_no needs to be 1 at line 12 and this happen only when the select statement in line 4 executes and exception no_data_found rose.…”

“…The cost of each relational predicate expression was calculated according to the cost functions given in the previous Section 3.1. Where branch predicate expressions consist of two or more relational predicates joined by logical connectives, and, or and not, and the cost values were combined according to the scheme given in Bottaci [24].…”

A search-based framework for automatic testing of MATLAB/Simulink models

“…The value K in the table refers to a failure constant that is added to further punish test-data that causes a term to be untrue. The table includes enhancements (the evaluation scheme for predicate E 1 _ E 2 ) by Bottaci (2003).…”

Search Based Automatic Test-Data Generation at an Architectural Level

“…Most work however, has been at the code level (e.g. [2,6,8,9,11,12,13,14]). The reader is referred to the authoritative survey [18] for a thorough overview of the field.…”

“…We need our goal (predicate) to be met at any step and so need to evaluate the cost of a disjunction of predicates. Bottaci [2] suggested a set of cost function encodings for logical operations that can be more accurate in reflecting the fitness of test-data compared to that of other researchers. We adapt his idea for our application as shown in Table 1.…”