2017/08/10 by João Felipe Silva Ouriques, Ouriques, João Felipe Silva, Emanuela G. Cartaxo +3
Computer Science · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Software Engineering (cs.SE) #Software Engineering Research #Software Reliability and Analysis Research #Software System Performance and Reliability #Software Testing and Debugging Techniques
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1708.03240
openalex publication_date 2017/08/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Recently, several Test Case Prioritization (TCP) techniques have been\nproposed to order test cases for achieving a goal during test execution,\nparticularly, revealing faults sooner. In the Model-Based Testing (MBT)\ncontext, such techniques are usually based on heuristics related to structural\nelements of the model and derived test cases. In this sense, techniques'\nperformance may vary due to a number of factors. While empirical studies\ncomparing the performance of TCP techniques have already been presented in\nliterature, there is still little knowledge, particularly in the MBT context,\nabout which factors may influence the outcomes suggested by a TCP technique. In\na previous family of empirical studies focusing on labeled transition systems,\nwe identified that the model layout, i.e. amount of branches, joins, and loops\nin the model, alone may have little influence on the performance of TCP\ntechniques investigated, whereas characteristics of test cases that actually\nfail definitely influences their performance. However, we considered only\nsynthetic artifacts in the study, which reduced the ability of representing\nproperly the reality. In this paper, we present a replication of one of these\nstudies, now with a larger and more representative selection of techniques and\nconsidering test suites from industrial applications as experimental objects.\nOur objective is to find out whether the results remain while increasing the\nvalidity in comparison to the original study. Results reinforce that there is\nno best performer among the investigated techniques and characteristics of test\ncases that fail represent an important factor, although adaptive random based\ntechniques are less affected by it.\n