Achievements, Open Problems and Challenges for Search Based Software Testing

Abstract

Search Based Software Testing (SBST) formulates testing as an optimisation problem, which can be attacked using computational search techniques from the field of Search Based Software Engineering (SBSE). We present an analysis of the SBST research agenda, focusing on the open problems and challenges of testing non-functional properties, in particular a topic we call 'Search Based Energy Testing' (SBET), Multi-objective SBST and SBST for Test Strategy Identification. We conclude with a vision of FIFIVERIFY tools, which would automatically find faults, fix them and verify the fixes. We explain why we think such FIFIVERIFY tools constitute an exciting challenge for the SBSE community that already could be within its reach.