Revealing influence of model structure and test case profile on the prioritization of test cases in the context of model-based testing

Abstract

Test case prioritization techniques aim at defining an ordering of test cases that favor the achievement of a goal during test execution, such as revealing faults as earlier as possible. A number of techniques have already been proposed and investigated in the literature and experimental results have discussed whether a technique is more successful than others. However, in the context of model-based testing, only a few attempts have been made towards either proposing or experimenting test case prioritization techniques. Moreover, a number of factors that may influence on the results obtained still need to be investigated before more general conclusions can be reached. In this paper, we present empirical studies that focus on observing the effects of two factors: the structure of the model and the profile of the test case that fails. Results show that the profile of the test case that fails may have a definite influence on the performance of the techniques investigated.