Algorithms and Tools for Model-Based Regression Testing

Regression testing is an important but expensive part of the software development life cycle. It is considered good practice that when a bug is located and fixed, a test that exposes the bug is recorded and regularly retested after subsequent modifications to the program. We develop tools use Bugzilla as bug-tracking system and integrate with an integrated test environment, STW (Software Testing Workbench) to support automated regression testing. Bugzilla is server software designed to help us manage software development and STW allow us to execute all the regression test cases automatically. The time required to execute an entire test suite is extremely long. For this reason, we present algorithms for prioritizing test cases in regression testing and also producing extended regression test suites.est case prioritization techniques schedule test cases for execution in an order to increasing the likelihood of revealing faults early in the testing process. This can provide faster feedback on the system under test, let software developers begin correcting faults earlier than might otherwise be possible and take advantage of information gathered about the previous execution of test cases to obtain test case orderings. We describe the technique for using test execution information to prioritize test cases for regression testing. We report the result of experiment in which we applied the technique to a test suite for various versions of program and compare with untreated and randomly ordered suites. Analysis of the data shows that our prioritization technique could be useful in the future. Automatic regression testing can greatly reduce software development cost and the time-to-market.Contents iist of Figures iiiist of Tables ivcknowledgements v Introduction 1.1 Background 1.2 Motivation 2.3 Purpose 3.4 Related Work 4.5 Thesis Framework 5 Background 6.1 The Test Case Prioritization Problem 6.2 The Longest Common Subsequence Problem 7.3 Testing and Test Control Notation, version 3 (TTCN-3) 8.4 Bugzilla 9.4.1 Life Cycle of a Bug 9 Previous work 11.1 Previous Environment Overview 11.2 Previous Testing Profiling Tool 14 An Integrated Environment 15.1 New Environment Overview 15.2 Upgraded Testing Profiling Tool 16 Bug Reporting 18.1 Combination with Bug-Tracking System 19.2 Flow for Bug Reporting 19 Regression Testing 20.1 An algorithm for Regression Testing with Prioritization 21.2 Flow for Regression Testing 22.3 Generation of Extended Test Suites 23.4 Retrieval the Execution Trace 23.5 Total Correlation Function 24 Implementation 26.1 Upgraded Testing Profiling Tool 26.2 Bug Reporter & Regression Tester 27.2.1 Software Architecture 27.2.2 Perl Scripts 28.2.3 File & Table Designs 28.2.4 Flow for Bug Reporter 29.2.5 Flow for Regression Tester 30.3 Prioritized Regression Tester 31 Experiment 32.1 Tools Support for Regression Testing 32.2 Prioritized Regression Testing Technology 39 Conclusions and Future Work 42ibliography 4