Modified condition decision coverage criteria for test suite prioritization using particle swarm optimization

Abstract

Purpose Test suite prioritization technique is the process of modifying the order in which tests run to meet certain objectives. Early fault detection and maximum coverage of source code are the main objectives of testing. There are several test suite prioritization approaches that have been proposed at the maintenance phase of software development life cycle. A few works are done on prioritizing test suites that satisfy modified condition decision coverage (MC/DC) criteria which are derived for safety-critical systems. The authors know that it is mandatory to do MC/DC testing for Level A type software according to RTCA/DO178C standards. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach This paper provides a novel method to prioritize the test suites for a system that includes MC/DC criteria along with other important criteria that ensure adequate testing. Findings In this approach, the authors generate test suites from the input Java program using concolic testing. These test suites are utilized to measure MC/DC% by using the coverage calculator algorithm. Now, use MC/DC% and the execution time of these test suites in the basic particle swarm optimization technique with a modified objective function to prioritize the generated test suites. Originality/value The proposed approach maximizes MC/DC% and minimizes the execution time of the test suites. The effectiveness of this approach is validated by experiments on 20 moderate-sized Java programs using average percentage of fault detected metric.