Title
Broadening the Search in Search-Based Software Testing: It Need Not Be Evolutionary
Abstract
Search-based software testing (SBST) can potentially help software practitioners create better test suites using less time and resources by employing powerful methods for search and optimization. However, research on SBST has typically focused on only a few search approaches and basic techniques. A majority of publications in recent years use some form of evolutionary search, typically a genetic algorithm, or, alternatively, some other optimization algorithm inspired from nature. This paper argues that SBST researchers and practitioners should not restrict themselves to a limited choice of search algorithms or approaches to optimization. To support our argument we empirically investigate three alternatives and compare them to the de facto SBST standards in regards to performance, resource efficiency and robustness on different test data generation problems: classic algorithms from the optimization literature, bayesian optimization with gaussian processes from machine learning, and nested monte carlo search from game playing / reinforcement learning. In all cases we show comparable and sometimes better performance than the current state-of-the-SBST-art. We conclude that SBST researchers should consider a more general set of solution approaches, more consider combinations and hybrid solutions and look to other areas for how to develop the field.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1109/SBST.2015.8
SBST@ICSE
Field
DocType
ISBN
Incremental heuristic search,Search algorithm,Computer science,Beam search,Theoretical computer science,Artificial intelligence,Machine learning,Genetic algorithm,Test data generation,Metaheuristic,Reinforcement learning,Search-based software engineering
Conference
978-1-4503-4166-0
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
9
0.52
15
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Robert Feldt1965.77
Simon M. Poulding213610.72