Test Data Generation Algorithms of Combinatorial Testing and Comparison Based on Cross-Entropy and Particle Swarm Optimization Method

Abstract

The test suite generation is one of key issues of combinatorial testing.This paper uses Cross-Entropy method of statistics and Particle Swarm Optimization from bionics to generate pairwise test data of combinatorial testing.The cross-entropy method used the best selection probability to generate test data and the particle swarm optimization generates test data by searching one with best fitness in a feasible solution.A theoretical method is given for the optimal probability selection of the cross-entropy method and a reduction technique is proposed to reduce the test suite generated by two methods.The empirical results show that the cross-entropy method and the particle swarm optimization have some merits compared with existing greedy algorithms,algebra methods and other heuristic search algorithms.