Test case prioritization techniques schedule test cases for regression testing
in an order that increases their ability to meet some performance goal. One performance
goal, rate of fault detection, measures how quickly faults are detected
within the testing process. The APFD metric had been proposed for measuring
the rate of fault detection. This metric applies, however, only in cases in which
test costs and fault costs are uniform. In practice, fault costs and test costs
are not uniform. For example, some faults which lead to system failures might
be more costly than faults which lead to minor errors. Similarly, a test case
that runs for several hours is much more costly than a test case that runs for
a few seconds. Previous work has thus provided a second, metric APFD[subscript c], for
measuring rate of fault detection, that incorporates test costs and fault costs.
However, studies of this metric thus far have been limited to abstract distribution
models of costs. These distribution models did not represent actual fault
costs and test costs for software systems.
In this thesis, we describe some practical ways to estimate real fault costs
and test costs for software systems, based on operational profiles and test execution timings. Further we define some new cost-cognizant prioritization techniques
which focus on the APFD[subscript c] metric. We report results of an empirical
study investigating the rate of "units-of-fault-cost-detected-per-unit-test-cost"
across various cost-cognizant prioritization techniques and tradeoffs between
techniques.
The results of our empirical study indicate that cost-cognizant test case prioritization
techniques can substantially improve the rate of fault detection of
test suites. The results also provide insights into the tradeoffs among various
prioritization techniques. For example: (1) techniques incorporating feedback
information (information from previous tests) outperformed those without any
feedback information; (2) technique effectiveness differed most when faults are
relatively difficult to detect; (3) in most cases, technique performance was similar
at function and statement level; (4) surprisingly, techniques considering
change location did not perform as well as expected. The study also reveals
several practical issues that might arise in applying test case prioritization, as
well as opportunities for future work. / Graduation date: 2003
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/28835 |
| Date | 02 December 2002 |
| Creators | Goel, Amit |
| Contributors | Rothermel, Gregg |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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