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European Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation

EvoApplications 2017: Applications of Evolutionary Computation pp 3–19Cite as

Hybrid Algorithms Based on Integer Programming for the Search of Prioritized Test Data in Software Product Lines

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 10200))

Abstract

In Software Product Lines (SPLs) it is not possible, in general, to test all products of the family. The number of products denoted by a SPL is very high due to the combinatorial explosion of features. For this reason, some coverage criteria have been proposed which try to test at least all feature interactions without the necessity to test all products, e.g., all pairs of features (pairwise coverage). In addition, it is desirable to first test products composed by a set of priority features. This problem is known as the Prioritized Pairwise Test Data Generation Problem. In this work we propose two hybrid algorithms using Integer Programming (IP) to generate a prioritized test suite. The first one is based on an integer linear formulation and the second one is based on a integer quadratic (nonlinear) formulation. We compare these techniques with two state-of-the-art algorithms, the Parallel Prioritized Genetic Solver (PPGS) and a greedy algorithm called prioritized-ICPL. Our study reveals that our hybrid nonlinear approach is clearly the best in both, solution quality and computation time. Moreover, the nonlinear variant (the fastest one) is 27 and 42 times faster than PPGS in the two groups of instances analyzed in this work.

This research is partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and FEDER under contract TIN2014-57341-R, the University of Málaga, Andalucía Tech and the Spanish Network TIN2015-71841-REDT (SEBASENet).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/ibmilogcpleoptistud.

  2. 2.

    https://www.gurobi.com.

  3. 3.

    Definitions based on [20, 21].

  4. 4.

    This definition of pair differs from the mathematical definition of the same term and is specific for SPLs. In particular, it adds more constraints to the traditional definition of pair.

  5. 5.

    f is the number of features in a feature model.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad de Málaga, Málaga, Spain

    Javier Ferrer, Francisco Chicano & Enrique Alba

Authors
  1. Javier Ferrer
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  2. Francisco Chicano
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  3. Enrique Alba
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Javier Ferrer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy

    Giovanni Squillero

  2. Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

    Kevin Sim

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Ferrer, J., Chicano, F., Alba, E. (2017). Hybrid Algorithms Based on Integer Programming for the Search of Prioritized Test Data in Software Product Lines. In: Squillero, G., Sim, K. (eds) Applications of Evolutionary Computation. EvoApplications 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10200. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55792-2_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55792-2_1

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