An Automatic Test Database Generation Algorithm Based on RQP

Abstract

Software testing is one of key technologies to guarantee quality and reliability of software. Most computer applications are related to database application systems. Test database generation is an important research topic of database application testing. There are a number of commercial tools to automatically generate test databases. These tools take the database schema and table sizes as input in order to generate new tuples. However, these tools often generate test databases which do not reflect the semantics of the application logic that should be tested. In this paper, we propose a test database generation algorithm based on RQP (Reverse Query Processing). Using database integrity constraints, our proposal first obtains data dependence of test data generation between separate tables in database, and then applies RQP to a top-down test database generation according to tester specified queries. The referential values in top tables are involved in test data generation of down tables when deriving tester specified queries. Algorithm analysis and case studies show that the test data generated from our new algorithm satisfies the database integrity constraints. The new algorithm improves the efficiency of the test database generation significantly, as well as follows the testing requirements of tester specified queries.