Can Search-Based Testing with Pareto Optimization Effectively Cover Failure-Revealing Test Inputs?

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the effectiveness of Pareto-based search optimization in software testing, revealing that such methods do not outperform random search in covering failure-inducing inputs in complex systems.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical critique and empirical evidence showing Pareto optimization techniques like NSGA-II and OMOPSO are ineffective for failure coverage compared to random search.

Findings

Pareto-based search does not outperform random search in failure coverage.

NSGA-II and OMOPSO are ineffective for covering failure-inducing inputs.

Theoretical analysis explains limitations of Pareto optimization in this context.

Abstract

Search-based software testing (SBST) is a widely adopted technique for testing complex systems with large input spaces, such as Deep Learning-enabled (DL-enabled) systems. Many SBST techniques focus on Pareto-based optimization, where multiple objectives are optimized in parallel to reveal failures. However, it is important to ensure that identified failures are spread throughout the entire failure-inducing area of a search domain and not clustered in a sub-region. This ensures that identified failures are semantically diverse and reveal a wide range of underlying causes. In this paper, we present a theoretical argument explaining why testing based on Pareto optimization is inadequate for covering failure-inducing areas within a search domain. We support our argument with empirical results obtained by applying two widely used types of Pareto-based optimization techniques, namely NSGA-II (an evolutionary algorithm) and OMOPSO (a swarm-based Pareto-optimization algorithm), to two DL-enabled systems: an industrial Automated Valet Parking (AVP) system and a system for classifying handwritten digits. We measure the coverage of failure-revealing test inputs in the input space using a metric that we refer to as the Coverage Inverted Distance quality indicator. Our results show that NSGA-II-based search and OMOPSO are not more effective than a na\"ive random search baseline in covering test inputs that reveal failures. The replication package for this study is available in a GitHub repository.