Test Suite Minimization in Regression Testing Using Hybrid Approach of ACO and GA

This article describes about the application of search-based techniques in regression testing and compares the performance of various search-based techniques for software testing. Test cases tend to increase exponentially as the software is modified. It is essential to remove redundant test cases from the existing test suite. Regression testing is very costly and must be performed in restricted ways to ensure the validity of the existing software. There exist different methods to improve the quality of test cases in terms of the number of faults covered, opposed to the number of statements covered in a minimum time. Different methods exist for this purpose, such as minimization, test case selection, and test case prioritization. In this article, search-based methods are applied to improve the quality of the test suite in order to select a minimum set of test cases which covers all the statements in a minimum time. The whole approach is named search based regression testing. In this paper, the performance of different metaheuristics for test suite minimization problem is also compared with a hybrid approach of ant colony optimization algorithm and genetic algorithm.