A Combinatorial Testing Strategy for Concurrent Programs

Published

June 7, 2007

Author(s)

Yu Lei, Richard Carver, Raghu N. Kacker, David Kung

Abstract

One approach to testing concurrent programs is called reachability testing, which derives test sequences automatically and on-the-fly, without constructing a static model. Existing reachability testing algorithms are exhaustive in that they are intended to exercise all possible synchronization (SYN) sequences of a concurrent program with a given input. In this paper, we present a new testing strategy, called a t-way reachability testing, that adopts the dynamic framework of reachability testing but selectively exercises a subset of synchronization sequences. The selection of the SYN-sequences is based on a combinatorial testing strategy called a t-way testing. We present an algorithm that implements the t-way reachability testing, and report the results of several case studies that were conducted to evaluate its effectiveness. The results indicate that the t-way reachability testing can substantially reduce the number of SYN-sequences exercised during reachability testing while still effectively detecting faults.

Citation

Software Testing Verification & Reliability

Volume

17

Issue

4

Pub Type

Journals

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DOI Link

Keywords

combinatorial testing, concurrency testing, t-way testing, software testing

Citation

Lei, Y. , Carver, R. , Kacker, R. and Kung, D. (2007), A Combinatorial Testing Strategy for Concurrent Programs, Software Testing Verification & Reliability, [online], https://doi.org/10.1002/stvr.369 (Accessed October 8, 2025)