Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

International Symposium on Search Based Software Engineering

SSBSE 2019: Search-Based Software Engineering pp 171–180Cite as

Dorylus: An Ant Colony Based Tool for Automated Test Case Generation

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 11664))

Abstract

Automated test generation to cover all branches within a program is a hard task. We present Dorylus, a test suite generation tool that uses ant colony optimisation, guided by coverage. Dorylus constructs a continuous domain over which it conducts independent, multiple objective search that employs a lightweight, dynamic, path-based input dependency analysis. We compare Dorylus with EvoSuite with respect to both coverage and speed using two corpora. The first benchmark contains string based programs, where our results demonstrate that Dorylus improves over EvoSuite on branch coverage and is 50% faster on average. The second benchmark consists of 936 Java programs from SF110 and suggests Dorylus generalises well as it achieves 79% coverage on average whereas the best performing of three EvoSuite algorithms reaches 89%.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.evosuite.org/experimental-data/sf110/.

References

  1. Alshraideh, M., Bottaci, L.: Search-based software test data generation for string data using program-specific search operators. Softw. Test. Verif. Reliab. 16(3), 175–203 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Arcuri, A.: Many Independent Objective (MIO) algorithm for test suite generation. In: Menzies, T., Petke, J. (eds.) SSBSE 2017. LNCS, vol. 10452, pp. 3–17. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66299-2_1

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Arcuri, A.: Test suite generation with the Many Independent Objective (MIO) algorithm. Inf. Softw. Technol. 104, 195–206 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Campos, J., Ge, Y., Fraser, G., Eler, M., Arcuri, A.: An empirical evaluation of evolutionary algorithms for test suite generation. In: Menzies, T., Petke, J. (eds.) SSBSE 2017. LNCS, vol. 10452, pp. 33–48. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66299-2_3

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. Fraser, G., Arcuri, A.: EvoSuite: automatic test suite generation for object-oriented software. In: Proceedings of the 19th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium and the 13th European Conference on Foundations of Software Engineering, pp. 416–419. ACM (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Fraser, G., Arcuri, A.: Whole test suite generation. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 39(2), 276–291 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Fraser, G., Arcuri, A.: A large-scale evaluation of automated unit test generation using evosuite. ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol. (TOSEM) 24(2), 8 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Galeotti, J.P., Fraser, G., Arcuri, A.: Improving search-based test suite generation with dynamic symbolic execution. In: IEEE 24th International Symposium Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE), pp. 360–369 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Harman, M., Clark, J.: Metrics are fitness functions too. In: Proceedings of 10th International Symposium on Software Metrics, pp. 58–69. IEEE (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Korel, B.: Automated software test data generation. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 16(8), 870–879 (1990)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. McMinn, P.: Search-based software test data generation: a survey. Softw. Test. Verif. Reliab. 14(2), 105–156 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Panichella, A., Campos, J., Fraser, G.: EvoSuite at the SBST 2019 tool competition. In: International Workshop on Search-Based Software Testing (SBST), pp. 29–32 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Panichella, A., Kifetew, F., Tonella, P.: Automated test case generation as a many-objective optimisation problem with dynamic selection of the targets. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 44(2), 122–158 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Panichella, A., Kifetew, F.M., Tonella, P.: Reformulating branch coverage as a many-objective optimization problem. In: IEEE 8th International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), pp. 1–10. IEEE (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Panichella, A., Kifetew, F.M., Tonella, P.: A large scale empirical comparison of state-of-the-art search-based test case generators. Inf. Softw. Technol. 104, 236–256 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Socha, K., Dorigo, M.: Ant colony optimization for continuous domains. Eur. J. Oper. Res. 185(3), 1155–1173 (2008)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University College London, London, UK

    Dan Bruce, Héctor D. Menéndez & David Clark

Authors
  1. Dan Bruce
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Héctor D. Menéndez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. David Clark
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dan Bruce .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. SnT/University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg

    Shiva Nejati

  2. University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

    Gregory Gay

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Bruce, D., Menéndez, H.D., Clark, D. (2019). Dorylus: An Ant Colony Based Tool for Automated Test Case Generation. In: Nejati, S., Gay, G. (eds) Search-Based Software Engineering. SSBSE 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11664. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27455-9_13

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27455-9_13

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-27454-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-27455-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation