IPOG/IPOG‐D: efficient test generation for multi‐way combinatorial testing

TLDR

Large numbers of multi‑way combinations make explicit enumeration prohibitive in space and time. The paper introduces two multi‑way testing strategies and presents the FireEye tool with analytic and experimental evaluation. The first strategy extends the in‑parameter‑order method to t‑way testing, requiring full enumeration, while the second combines it with a recursive construction to reduce enumerated combinations; both are deterministic. Both strategies deterministically generate identical test sets for a given system configuration, and FireEye’s evaluation demonstrates their effectiveness. © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents two strategies for multi‐way testing (i.e. t ‐way testing with t > 2 ). The first strategy generalizes an existing strategy, called in‐parameter‐order, from pairwise testing to multi‐way testing. This strategy requires all multi‐way combinations to be explicitly enumerated. When the number of multi‐way combinations is large, however, explicit enumeration can be prohibitive in terms of both the space for storing these combinations and the time needed to enumerate them. To alleviate this problem, the second strategy combines the first strategy with a recursive construction procedure to reduce the number of multi‐way combinations that have to be enumerated. Both strategies are deterministic, i.e. they always produce the same test set for the same system configuration. This paper reports a multi‐way testing tool called FireEye, and provides an analytic and experimental evaluation of the two strategies. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.