Test Case Selection With and Without Replacement

Information Sciences 129 (1-4): 81-103 (2000)

Test Case Selection With and Without Replacement ¹

Hing Leung ² , T.H. Tse ³ , F.T. Chan ⁴ , and T.Y. Chen ⁵

ABSTRACT

Previous theoretical studies on the effectiveness of partition testing and random testing have assumed that test cases are selected with replacement. Although this assumption has been well known to be less realistic, it has still been used in previous theoretical work because it renders the analyses more tractable. This paper presents a theoretical investigation aimed at comparing the effectiveness when test cases are selected with and without replacement, and exploring the relationships between these two scenarios. We propose a new effectiveness metric for software testing, namely the expected number of distinct failures detected, to re-examine existing partition testing strategies.

1. This research is supported in part by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.

2. Department of Computer Science, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA.

3. (Corresponding author.)

Department of Computer Science, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong.
Email:

4. School of Professional and Continuing Education, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong.

5. Centre for Software Analysis and Testing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn 3122, Australia. (Part of the work was carried out when Chen was with the Vocational Training Council, Hong Kong.)

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	1.	This research is supported in part by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.
	2.	Department of Computer Science, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA.
	3.	(Corresponding author.)
		Department of Computer Science, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong. Email:

	4.	School of Professional and Continuing Education, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong.
	5.	Centre for Software Analysis and Testing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn 3122, Australia. (Part of the work was carried out when Chen was with the Vocational Training Council, Hong Kong.)