Test suite reduction based on dependence analysis

Abstract

A test suite, constructed either manually or automatically using a coverage criterion, can be reduced without significantly reducing its fault-detection capability by eliminating all but one of the equivalent test cases from each class of equivalent test cases of the test suite. In this paper, we use the analysis of control and data dependencies in an EFSM model of the system requirements to identify patterns of interaction among the elements of the EFSM that affect a requirement under test. These patterns are used to identify equivalent test cases w.r.t. the requirement under test; only one test case per equivalence class is kept, and equivalence classes that are not covered by any test cases are flagged. A software tool - Test Suite Reduction (TSR) based on above concept-is introduced. This tool is implemented in C++ and Java languages and runs on Sun workstations under Solaris Spare 5.8. Additionally, the results of the application of TSR to several examples are also presented. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.