Using Swarm Intelligence to Generate Test Data for Covering Prime Paths

Abstract

Search-based test data generation methods mostly consider the branch coverage criterion. To the best of our knowledge, only two works exist which propose a fitness function that can support the prime path coverage criterion, while this criterion subsumes the branch coverage criterion. These works are based on the Genetic Algorithm (GA) while scalability of the evolutionary algorithms like GA is questionable. Since there is a general agreement that evolutionary algorithms are inferior to swarm intelligence algorithms, we propose a new approach based on swarm intelligence for covering prime paths. We utilize two prominent swarm intelligence algorithms, i.e., ACO and PSO, along with a new normalized fitness function to provide a better approach for covering prime paths. To make ACO applicable for the test data generation problem, we provide a customization of this algorithm. The experimental results show that PSO and the proposed customization of ACO are both more efficient and more effective than GA when generating test data to cover prime paths. Also, the customized ACO, in comparison to PSO, has better effectiveness while has a worse efficiency.