Test suite prioritisation using trace events technique

Abstract

The size of the test suite and the duration of time determines the time taken by the regression testing. Conversely, the testers can prioritise the test cases by the use of a competent prioritisation technique to obtain an increased rate of fault detection in the system, allowing for earlier corrections, and getting higher overall confidence that the software has been tested suitably. A prioritised test suite is more likely to be more effective during that time period than would have been achieved via a random ordering if execution needs to be suspended after some time. An enhanced test case ordering may be probable if the desired implementation time to run the test cases is proven earlier. This research work's main intention is to prioritise the regressiontesting test cases. In order to prioritise the test cases some factors are considered here. These factors are employed in the prioritisation algorithm. The trace events are one of the important factors, used to find the most significant test cases in the projects. The requirement factor value is calculated and subsequently a weightage is calculated and assigned to each test case in the software based on these factors by using a thresholding technique. Later, the test cases are prioritised according to the weightage allocated to them. Executing the test cases based on the prioritisation will greatly decreases the computation cost and time. The proposed technique is efficient in prioritising the regression test cases. The new prioritised subsequences of the given unit test suites are executed on Java programs after the completion of prioritisation. Average of the percentage of faults detected is an evaluation metric used for evaluating the 'superiority' of these orderings.