The State-of-the-art Hybrid Approaches in Regression Testing

[ DOI: ۱۰.۲۲۰۶۸/ijiepr.۳۴.۱.۴ ]    [ Downloaded from ijiepr.iust.ac.ir on ۲۰۲۳-۰۶-۲۱ ] Software testing is the process of assessing the functionality of a software program. The software testing process checks for inaccuracies, gaps and whether the application outcome matches desired expectations before the software is installed and goes into production. Normally in large organizations, the development team allocates a high portion of estimated development time, cost and efficiency for regression testing to assure software testing quality assurance. The quality of developed software relies upon three factors time, efficiency and testing technique used for regression testing. Regression testing is an important component of software testing and maintenance, taking up a significant share of the total testing time, efficiency and resources organizations use in testing techniques. The key to successful regression testing using Test Case Prioritization (TCP), Test case Selection (TCS) and Test Case Minimization (TCM) is maximizing the test cases' effectiveness while considering the limited resources available. Regression testing introduced numerous techniques for (TCP, TCS, TCM) to maximize the efficiency based on Average Percentage Fault Detection (APFD). In recent studies, the TCP and TCS techniques can give the highest APFD score. However, each TCP and TCS approacshow limitations, such as high execution cost, time, efficiency, and lack of information. TCP and TCS approaches that can cover multiple test suite variables (time, cost, efficiency) remained inefficient. Thus, there is a need for a hybrid TCP and TCS technique to be developed to search for the best method that gives a high APFD score while having good coverage of test cases relevant to the cost and execution time to improve efficiency. The hybrid technique aims to define an ideal ranking order of test cases, allowing for higher coverage and early fault detection with reduced test suite size. This study reviews TCP and TCS hybrid techniques to reduce testing time, cost and improve efficiency for regression testing. Each TCS and TCP technique in regression testing has identified apparent standards, benefits, and restrictions.

Keywords:

Regression Testing , Software Testing , Test-case prioritization , Test Case Selection , Test Case Minimization , Hybrid Techniques