A Hybrid Meta-Heuristic Approach for Test Case Prioritization and Optimization

Abstract

The application of the test case prioritization method is a key part of system testing intended to think it through and sort out the issues early in the development stage. Traditional prioritization techniques frequently fail to take into account the complexities of big-scale test suites, growing systems and time constraints, therefore cannot fully fix this problem. The proposed study here will deal with a meta-heuristic hybrid method that focuses on addressing the challenges of the modern time. The strategy utilizes genetic algorithms alongside a black hole as a means to create a smooth tradeoff between exploring numerous possibilities and exploiting the best one. The proposed hybrid algorithm of genetic black hole (HGBH) uses the capabilities of considering the imperatives such as code coverage, fault finding rate and execution time from search algorithms in our hybrid approach to refine test cases considerations repetitively. The strategy accomplished this by putting experiments on a large-scale project of industrial software developed. The hybrid meta-heuristic technique ends up being better than the routine techniques. It helps in higher code coverage, which, in turn, enables to detect crucial defects at an early stage and also to allocate the testing resources in a better way. In particular, the best APFD value was 0.9321, which was achieved in 6 generations with 4.879 seconds the value to which the computer was run. Besides these, , the approach resulted in the mean value of APFD as 0.9247 and 0.9302 seconds which took from 10.509 seconds to 30.372 seconds. The carried out experiment proves the feasibility of this approach in implementing complex systems and consistently detecting the changes, enabling it to adapt to rapidly changing systems. In the end, this research provides us with a new hybrid meta-heuristic way of test case prioritization and optimization, which, in turn, helps to tackle the obstacles caused by large-scale test cases and constantly changing systems.