A Logical Approach to Generating Test Plans

TL;DR

This paper presents a logical method for automatically generating optimized test plans that minimize test cases by inferring results, using Boolean formulas to model dependencies and ensuring optimality.

Contribution

It introduces a formal, Boolean-based approach to generate test plans that maximize test case inference and reduce testing effort, with guarantees of optimality.

Findings

Successfully models test dependencies with Boolean formulas

Provides an algorithm with formal optimality guarantees

Reduces number of test cases needed in test plans

Abstract

During the execution of a test plan, a test manager may decide to drop a test case if its result can be inferred from already executed test cases. We show that it is possible to automatically generate a test plan to exploit the potential to justifiably drop a test case and thus reduce the number of test cases. Our approach uses Boolean formulas to model the mutual dependencies between test results. The algorithm to generate a test plan comes with the formal guarantee of optimality with regards to the inference of the result of a test case from already executed test cases.