Ghiduk, A.S.; Fac. of Sci., Beni-Suef Univ., Beni-Suef, Egypt This paper appears in: Software Engineering Conference, 2009. APSEC '09. Asia-Pacific I ssue Date: 1-3 Dec. 2009 On page(s): 145 - 151 Location: Penang I SSN: 1530-1362 Print I SBN: 978-0-7695-3909-6 I NSPEC Accession Number: 11035493 Digital Object I dentifier: 10.1109/APSEC.2009.13 Date of Current Version: 28 December 2009 ABSTRACT Search-based optimization techniques have been utilized for a number of software engineering activities. The representation of the problem and the definition of the fitness function (FF) are two key ingredients for the application of search-based optimization to software engineering problems. Therefore, a well-defined fitness function is essential to the effectiveness and efficiency of the search-based testing (SBT). Several search based test- data generation techniques have been developed. A wide range of these techniques utilized the control dependencies (CD) for guiding the search in the direction of finding test data. To direct the SBT to generate test data, Ghiduk et al. have presented a search-based technique that utilizes the dominances (Dom) between the nodes of the control-flow graph (CFG) of the program under test. In this paper, we investigate the efficiency of dominances in a control-flow graph against the control dependencies in guiding the search for breeding test data. The paper provides a number of structures which cause problems for the search that is guided by the control dependencies to find the test data. The paper introduces two schemes for overcoming these problems. The first scheme improves the functions of the previous work to overcome control-dependencies problems. The second scheme presents a general form for a fitness function in terms of dominances and postdominances nodes. This function will significantly enhance the efficiency of the SBT; consequently the search-based testing overcomes the control-dependencies problems. Browse > Conferences> Software Engineering Conferenc ... Search-Based Testing Guidance Using Dominances vs. Control Dependencies z I EEE terms Ant colony optimization , Application software , Cost function , Genetic algorithms , Particle swarm optimization , Simulated annealing , Software engineering , Software testing , Switches z I NSPEC { Controlled I ndexing optimisation , program testing , search problems , software engineering { Non Controlled I ndexing control dependencies , control-flow graph , dominances , search based test-data generation techniques , search-based optimization techniques , search- based testing guidance , software engineering activities z Author Keywords control dependecnies , dominance , genetic algorithms , search-based testing , test-data generation I NDEX TERMS 1. M. Harman, "The current state and future of search based software engineering," Proc. of the International Conference on Future of Software Engineering (FOSE 07), May 2007, pp. 342-357. 2. R. P. Pargas, M. J. Harrold, and R. R. Peck, "Test data generation using genetic algorithms" Journal of Software Testing, Verifications and Reliability, vol. 9, pp. 263-282, 1999. [CrossRef] 3. A. S. Ghiduk, M. J. Harrold, M. R. Girgis, "Using genetic algorithms to aid test-data generation for data flow coverage," Proc. of 14 Abstract |Full Text: PDF (302KB) 4. P. McMinn, "Search-based software test data generation: A survey," Journal of Software Testing Verification and Reliability, vol. 14, no. 2, June 2004, pp. 105-156. [CrossRef] REFERENCES Page 1 of 2 IEEE Xplore - Search-Based Testing Guidance Using Dominances vs. Control Dependen... 5/9/2011 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5358573