Automatic Generation of combination of Values for Functional Testing Using Metaheuristics

Abstract

Several authors agree with the importance of the tests like element of quality control of the software and in the impossibility of their realization of exhaustive way. This opinion defends that, the necessary quan-tity of stages and test values to achieve the maximum coverage is too big, what converts the test-case design, and in particular the generation of its values, in a combinatorial problem. That´s why, in many instances, in front of the impossibility of covering all the stages, testers leave out of the design some inter-esting values, which can discover inconsistencies with the specified requirements.This work presents a proposal for the automatic generation of values of functional test cases, by means of the use of meta-heu-ristic algorithms and maximizing the coverage of the stages. Furthermore, the algorithms implemented for the generation of initial values and for the generation of combinations are detailed. Additionally a set of good practices to use the component and the comparison of the obtained results with other existing solutions are described.