A heuristic-based regression test case prioritization approach for object-oriented programs

• Published in: Innovations in systems and software engineering Vol. 10; no. 3; pp. 155 - 163
• Main Authors: Panigrahi, Chhabi Rani, Mall, Rajib
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Springer London 01-09-2014
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Computer Applications; Computer Science; Original Paper; Software Engineering; Software maintenance; Slicing; Regression test selection; Regression test case prioritization
• ISSN: 1614-5046; 1614-5054
• DOI: 10.1007/s11334-013-0221-z

We propose a novel regression test case prioritization technique based on an analysis of a dependence model for object-oriented programs. We first construct an intermediate dependence model of a program from its source code. When the program is modified, the model is updated to reflect the changes. Our constructed model represents control and data dependencies as well as information pertaining to various types of dependencies arising from object relations such as association, inheritance and aggregation. We determine the affected nodes in the model by constructing the union of the forward slices corresponding to each changed model element. The test cases covering one or more affected nodes are selected for regression testing. The test cases in the selected regression test suite are then prioritized based on their weights and the weight of a test case is determined by assigning weights to the affected nodes. Our experimental results indicate that our approach on an average achieves an increase in the APFD metric value by 9.01 % as compared to a related approach.