Regression testing process improvement for specification evolution of real-world protocol software

Abstract

Model-based testing helps test engineers automate their testing tasks so that they can be more cost-effective. When the model is changed due to the evolution of the specification, it is important to maintain the test suites up to date for regression testing. A complete regeneration of the whole test suite from the new model, although inefficient, is still frequently used in practice. To handle specification evolution effectively, we propose a test case reusability analysis technique to identify reusable test cases of the original test suite based on graph analysis, so that we can generate new test cases to cover only the change-related parts of the new model. Our experiment on four large protocol document testing projects shows that the technique can significantly reduce regression testing time when compared with complete regeneration of the test suites. © 2010 IEEE.