Moving forward with combinatorial interaction testing

Combinatorial interaction testing (CIT) is an efficient and effective method of detecting failures that are caused by the interactions of various system input parameters. In this paper, we discuss CIT, point out some of the difficulties of applying it in practice, and highlight some recent advances that have improved CIT’s applicability to modern systems. We also provide a roadmap for future research and directions; one that we hope will lead to new CIT research and to higher quality testing of industrial systems

Cost-aware combinatorial interaction testing

The configuration spaces of modern software systems are often too large to test exhaustively. Combinatorial interaction testing approaches (CIT), such as covering arrays, systematically sample the configuration space and test only the selected configurations. Traditional t-way covering arrays aim to cover all t-way combinations of option settings in a minimum number of configurations. By doing so, they assume that the testing cost of a configuration is the same for all configurations. In this work, we however argue that, in practice, the actual testing cost may differ from one configuration to another and that accounting for these differences can improve the cost-effectiveness of covering arrays. In this work, we first introduce a novel combinatorial object, called a cost-aware covering array. A t-way cost-aware covering array is a t-way covering array that minimizes a given cost function. We then provide a framework for defining the cost function. Finally, we present an algorithm to compute cost-aware covering arrays for a simple, yet important scenario, and empirically evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the proposed approach. The results of our empirical studies suggest that cost-aware covering arrays, depending on the configuration space model used, can greatly reduce the actual cost of testing compared to traditional covering arrays

Regard de quatre politiciens valaisans: quelles sont les diverses tendances politiques au sein des partis valaisans pour les structures d'accueil de l'enfance ?

Le cadre de fonctionnement, les normes et les conditions de travail dans les structures d’accueil de l’enfance sont édictées, de par le système législatif, par les politiciens suisses. Ainsi, toutes les améliorations, les exigences et les besoins de changements dans l’éducation de l’enfance doivent se faire en collaboration et se négocier avec le monde politique suisse. Ce travail a donc pour but de décrire les niveaux politiques qu’influent sur la petite enfance et de développer les opinions des quatre grands partis du canton du Valais qui sont : l’union démocratique du centre, le parti libéral radical, le parti démocrate-chrétien et le parti socialiste. Ce cheminement permettra d’identifier la provenance des directives concernant la petite enfance et les entités aptes à les modifier

Localizing Configurations In Highly-Configurable Systems

The complexity of configurable systems has grown immensely, and it is only getting more complex. Such systems are a challenge for software testing and maintenance, because bugs and other defects can and do appear in any configuration. One common requirement for many development tasks is to identify the configurations that lead to a given defect or some other program behavior. We distill this requirement down to a challenge question: given a program location in a source file, what are valid configurations that include the location? The key obstacle is scalability. When there are thousands of configuration options, enumerating all combinations is exponential and infeasible. We provide a set of target programs of increasing difficulty and variations on the challenge question so that submitters of all experience levels can try out solutions. Our hope is to engage the community and stimulate new and interesting approaches to the problem of analyzing configurations