Testing container classes: Random or systematic?

Rohan Sharma, Milos Gligoric, Andrea Arcuri, Gordon Fraser, Darko Marinov

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Container classes such as lists, sets, or maps are elementary data structures common to many programming languages. Since they are a part of standard libraries, they are important to test, which led to research on advanced testing techniques targeting such containers and research on comparing testing techniques using such containers. However, these techniques have not been thoroughly compared to simpler techniques such as random testing. We present the results of a larger case study in which we compare random testing with shape abstraction, a systematic technique that showed the best results in a previous study. Our experiments show that random testing is about as effective as shape abstraction for testing these containers, which raises the question whether containers are well suited as a benchmark for comparing advanced testing techniques.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationFundamental Approaches to Software Engineering - 14th International Conference, FASE 2011, Held as Part of the Joint European Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2011, Proceedings
Pages262-277
Number of pages16
DOIs
StatePublished - 2011
Event14th International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering, FASE 2011, Held as Part of the Joint European Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2011 - Saarbrucken, Germany
Duration: Mar 26 2011Apr 3 2011

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume6603 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Other

Other14th International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering, FASE 2011, Held as Part of the Joint European Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2011
Country/TerritoryGermany
CitySaarbrucken
Period3/26/114/3/11

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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