Adaptive random testing by exclusion through test profile

One major objective of software testing is to reveal software failures such that program bugs can be removed. Random testing is a basic and simple software testing technique, but its failure-detection effectiveness is often controversial. Based on the common observation that program inputs causing software failures tend to cluster into contiguous regions, some researchers have proposed that an even spread of test cases should enhance the failure-detection effectiveness of random testing. Adaptive random testing refers to a family of algorithms to evenly spread random test cases based on various notions. Restricted random testing, an algorithm to implement adaptive random testing by the notion of exclusion, defines an exclusion region around each previously executed test case, and selects test cases only from outside all exclusion regions. Although having a high failure-detection effectiveness, restricted random testing has a very high computation overhead, and it rigidly discards all test cases inside any exclusion region, some of which may reveal software failures. In this paper, we propose a new method to implement adaptive random testing by exclusion, where test cases are simply selected based on a well-designed test profile. The new method has a low computation overhead and it does not omit any possible program inputs that can detect failures. Our experimental results show that the new method not only spreads test cases more evenly but also brings a higher failure-detection effectiveness than random testing.