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A novel strategy for automatic test data generation using soft computing technique

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Abstract

Software testing is one of the most crucial and analytical aspect to assure that developed software meets prescribed quality standards. Software development process invests at least 50% of the total cost in software testing process. Optimum and efficacious test data design of software is an important and challenging activity due to the nonlinear structure of software. Moreover, test case type and scope determines the quality of test data. To address this issue, software testing tools should employ intelligence based soft computing techniques like particle swarm optimization (PSO) and genetic algorithm (GA) to generate smart and efficient test data automatically. This paper presents a hybrid PSO and GA based heuristic for automatic generation of test suites. In this paper, we described the design and implementation of the proposed strategy and evaluated our model by performing experiments with ten container classes from the Java standard library. We analyzed our algorithm statistically with test adequacy criterion as branch coverage. The performance adequacy criterion is taken as percentage coverage per unit time and percentage of faults detected by the generated test data. We have compared our work with the heuristic based upon GA, PSO, existing hybrid strategies based on GA and PSO and memetic algorithm. The results showed that the test case generation is efficient in our work.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science and Engineering Department, Thapar University, Patiala, 147004, India

    Priyanka Chawla & Inderveer Chana

  2. Amity School of Engineering, Amity University, Noida, 201301, India

    Ajay Rana

Authors
  1. Priyanka Chawla
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  2. Inderveer Chana
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  3. Ajay Rana
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Priyanka Chawla.

Additional information

Ms Priyanka Chawla is pursuing doctoral program (PhD) at Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) Department of Thapar University, India. Her qualifications includes B.Tech (CSE), M.Tech(CSE). She is a dedicated researcher in the field of soft computing, cloud computing and software engineering. She has authored various research papers and book chapters in journals of good repute. She is member of ACM and ISTE.

Dr. Inderveer Chana is PhD in Computer Science with specialization in Grid Computing and ME in Software Engineering from Thapar University, India and BE in Computer Science and Engineering. She is presently serving as associate professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department of Thapar University, India. Her research interests include grid and cloud computing and other areas of interest are software engineering and software project management. She has more than 70 research publications in reputed Journals and Conferences. Under her supervision, one PhD thesis has been awarded, two are submitted and five PhD thesis are on-going in the area of grid and cloud computing. She is also working on two major research projects in the area of energy aware utility and cloud computing.

Prof (Dr.) Ajay Rana has a rich experience of industry and academia of around 15 years. He has had an outstanding academic record and is a product of prestigious system throughout. He has published more than 177 research papers in reputed journals and proceedings of international and nationalnational conferences. He has co-authored 05 books and co-edited 36 conference proceedings. He has delivered invited lectures in more than 36 technical and management workshop/conferences programs in India and abroad. He is a member of board of governess (BOG), advisory council (AC), academic executive (AE) member, board of studies (BOS) and special member of many Indian and foreign universities as well as industry. He is editor in chief, technical committee member, advisory board member for 18 plus technical journals and conferences at national and international levels. He has received a number of awards and honors like eduCLUSION AWARD 2014 for displaying extraordinary initiative for higher technical education (Singapore 2014), IMTT award in Italy (2014), International WHO’S WHO of Professionals, USA. (2014), IT Next CIO award 2011 in pune, best advisor SIFE at Mumbai in 2011 etc and was recipient of national merit scholarship.

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Chawla, P., Chana, I. & Rana, A. A novel strategy for automatic test data generation using soft computing technique. Front. Comput. Sci. 9, 346–363 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-014-3496-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-014-3496-9

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