Skip to main content

Genetic Programming for Multi-objective Test Data Generation in Search Based Software Testing

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10400))

Abstract

Software testing is an indispensable part in software development to ensure the quality of products. Multi-objective test data generation is a sub-area of search-based software testing, which focuses on automatically generating test data to form high quality test suites. Due to the limited data representation and the lack of specific multi-objective optimization methods, existing approaches have drawbacks in dealing with real-world programs. This paper presents a new approach to multi-objective test data generation problems using genetic programming (GP), while two genetic algorithm (GA) based approaches are also implemented for comparison purposes. Furthermore, three multi-objective optimization frameworks are used and compared to examine the performance of the GP-based methods. Experiments have been conducted on two types of test data generation problems: integer and double. Each consists of 160 benchmark programs with different degrees of nesting. The results suggest that the new GP approaches perform much better than the two GA-based approaches, and a random search baseline algorithm.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Afzal, W., Torkar, R., Feldt, R.: A systematic review of search-based testing for non-functional system properties. Inf. Softw. Technol. 51(6), 957–976 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Aleti, A., Grunske, L.: Test data generation with a kalman filter-based adaptive genetic algorithm. J. Syst. Softw. 103, 343–352 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Deb, K., Pratap, A., Agarwal, S., Meyarivan, T.: A fast and elitist multiobjective genetic algorithm: NSGA-II. IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput. 6(2), 182–197 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Ferrer, J., Chicano, F., Alba, E.: Benchmark generator for software testers. In: Iliadis, L., Maglogiannis, I., Papadopoulos, H. (eds.) AIAI/EANN -2011. IAICT, vol. 364, pp. 378–388. Springer, Heidelberg (2011). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-23960-1_45

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. Ferrer, J., Chicano, F., Alba, E.: Evolutionary algorithms for the multi-objective test data generation problem. Softw.: Pract. Exp. 42(11), 1331–1362 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Galler, S.J., Aichernig, B.K.: Survey on test data generation tools. Int. J. Softw. Tools Technol. Transfer 16(6), 727–751 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Ghiduk, A.S., Harrold, M.J., Girgis, M.R.: Using genetic algorithms to aid test-data generation for data-flow coverage. In: 14th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference, APSEC 2007, pp. 41–48. IEEE (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Harman, M., Jia, Y., Langdon, W.B.: Strong higher order mutation-based test data generation. In: Proceedings of the 19th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium and the 13th European Conference on Foundations of Software Engineering, pp. 212–222. ACM (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Harman, M., Jia, Y., Zhang, Y.: Achievements, open problems and challenges for search based software testing. In: IEEE 8th International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), pp. 1–12. IEEE (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Koza, J.R.: Introduction to genetic programming tutorial: from the basics to human-competitive results. In: Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference Companion on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, pp. 2137–2262. ACM (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Lakhotia, K., Harman, M., McMinn, P.: A multi-objective approach to search-based test data generation. In: Proceedings of the 9th Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, pp. 1098–1105. ACM (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Nebro, A.J., Durillo, J.J., Luna, F., Dorronsoro, B., Alba, E.: Mocell: a cellular genetic algorithm for multiobjective optimization. Int. J. Intell. Syst. 24(7), 726–746 (2009)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. Oster, N., Saglietti, F.: Automatic test data generation by multi-objective optimisation. In: Górski, J. (ed.) SAFECOMP 2006. LNCS, vol. 4166, pp. 426–438. Springer, Heidelberg (2006). doi:10.1007/11875567_32

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  14. Pinto, G.H., Vergilio, S.R.: A multi-objective genetic algorithm to test data generation. In: 2010 22nd IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI), vol. 1, pp. 129–134. IEEE (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Sahin, O., Akay, B.: Comparisons of metaheuristic algorithms and fitness functions on software test data generation. Appl. Soft Comput. 49, 1202–1214 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Tracey, N.J.: A search-based automated test-data generation framework for safety-critical software. Ph.D. thesis, Citeseer (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Wang, Z., Tang, K., Yao, X.: Multi-objective approaches to optimal testing resource allocation in modular software systems. IEEE Trans. Reliab. 59(3), 563–575 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Zitzler, E., Laumanns, M., Thiele, L., Zitzler, E., Zitzler, E., Thiele, L., Thiele, L.: SPEA2: improving the strength Pareto evolutionary algorithm (2001)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bing Xue .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Huo, J., Xue, B., Shang, L., Zhang, M. (2017). Genetic Programming for Multi-objective Test Data Generation in Search Based Software Testing. In: Peng, W., Alahakoon, D., Li, X. (eds) AI 2017: Advances in Artificial Intelligence. AI 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10400. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63004-5_14

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63004-5_14

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-63003-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-63004-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics