A Test Case Prioritization Approach Based on Software Component Metrics

The most common way of performing regression testing is by executing all test cases associated with a software system. However, this approach is not scalable since time and cost to execute the test cases increase together with the system’s size. A way to address this consists of prioritizing the existing test cases, aiming to maximize a test suite’s fault detection rate. To address the limitations of existing approaches, in this paper we propose a new approach to maximize the rate of fault detection of test suites. Our proposal has three steps: i) infer code components’ criticality values using a fuzzy inference system; ii) calculate test cases’ criticality; iii) prioritize the test cases using ant colony optimization. The test cases are prioritized considering criticality, execution time and history of faults, and the resulting test suites are evaluated according to their fault detection rate. The evaluation was performed in eight programs, and the results show that the fault detection rate of the solutions was higher than in the non-ordered test suites and ones obtained using a greedy approach, reaching the optimal value when possible to verify. A sanity check was performed, comparing the obtained results to the results of a random search. The approach performed better at significant levels of statistic and practical difference, evidencing its true applicability to the prioritization of test cases.