An empirical study of the effects of test-suite reduction on fault localization

Fault-localization techniques that utilize information about all test cases in a test suite have been presented. These techniques use various approaches to identify the likely faulty part(s) of a program, based on information about the execution of the program with the test suite. Researchers have b...

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Published in:2008 ACM/IEEE 30th International Conference on Software Engineering Vol. 2008; no. 24; pp. 201 - 210
Main Authors: Yanbing Yu, Jones, J.A., Harrold, M.J.
Format: Conference Proceeding Journal Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 01.01.2008
Subjects:
Educational institutions
empirical study
Fault diagnosis
fault localization
Permission
Size measurement
Software debugging
Software engineering
Software testing
test-suite reduction
ISBN:1424444861, 9781424444861, 1605580791, 9781605580791
ISSN:0270-5257
Online Access:Get full text
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Abstract Fault-localization techniques that utilize information about all test cases in a test suite have been presented. These techniques use various approaches to identify the likely faulty part(s) of a program, based on information about the execution of the program with the test suite. Researchers have begun to investigate the impact that the composition of the test suite has on the effectiveness of these fault-localization techniques. In this paper, we present the first experiment on one aspect of test-suite composition--test-suite reduction. Our experiment studies the impact of the test-suite reduction on the effectiveness of fault-localization techniques. In our experiment, we apply 10 test-suite reduction strategies to test suites for eight subject programs. We then measure the differences between the effectiveness of four existing fault-localization techniques on the unreduced and reduced test suites. We also measure the reduction in test-suite size of the 10 test-suite reduction strategies. Our experiment shows that fault-localization effectiveness varies depending on the test-suite reduction strategy used, and it demonstrates the trade-offs between test-suite reduction and fault-localization effectiveness.
AbstractList Fault-localization techniques that utilize information about all test cases in a test suite have been presented. These techniques use various approaches to identify the likely faulty part(s) of a program, based on information about the execution of the program with the test suite. Researchers have begun to investigate the impact that the composition of the test suite has on the effectiveness of these fault-localization techniques. In this paper, we present the first experiment on one aspect of test-suite composition--test-suite reduction. Our experiment studies the impact of the test-suite reduction on the effectiveness of fault-localization techniques. In our experiment, we apply 10 test-suite reduction strategies to test suites for eight subject programs. We then measure the differences between the effectiveness of four existing fault-localization techniques on the unreduced and reduced test suites. We also measure the reduction in test-suite size of the 10 test-suite reduction strategies. Our experiment shows that fault-localization effectiveness varies depending on the test-suite reduction strategy used, and it demonstrates the trade-offs between test-suite reduction and fault-localization effectiveness.
Author Harrold, M.J.
Jones, J.A.
Yanbing Yu
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Snippet Fault-localization techniques that utilize information about all test cases in a test suite have been presented. These techniques use various approaches to...
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SubjectTerms Educational institutions
empirical study
Fault diagnosis
fault localization
Permission
Size measurement
Software debugging
Software engineering
Software testing
test-suite reduction
Title An empirical study of the effects of test-suite reduction on fault localization
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