Priority Integration for Weighted Combinatorial Testing

Priorities (weights) for parameter values can improve the effectiveness of combinatorial testing. Previous approaches have employed weights to derive high-priority test cases either earlier or more frequently. Our approach integrates these order-focused and frequency-focused prioritizations. We show that our priority integration realizes a small test suite providing high-priority test cases early and frequently in a good balance. We also propose two algorithms that apply our priority integration to existing combinatorial test generation algorithms. Experimental results using numerous test models show that our approach improves the existing approaches w.r.t. Order-focused and frequency-focused metrics, while overheads in the size and generation time of test suites are small.