Artificial Bee Colony Based Prioritization Algorithm for Test Case Prioritization Problem

Abstract

In software engineering filed, regression testing can be described as one of important task to test the testcases. In regression testing, test cases from test suites are executed repeatedly such that modifications incorporated in software cannot lead to unpredictable outcomes. As, the functionality increases in software's, the size of test suites also increased. In turn, regression testing becomes one of time consuming and costly task. So, to reduce cost and time, instead of complete test suite can run, a subset of test cases is selected. The selection of this subset is known as test case prioritization (TCP). TCP becomes the NP-hard problem when size of test suites and test cases increases. Hence, there is a need of prioritization algorithm that can select optimal subset of test cases to overcome the aforementioned problems. Recent studies showed that artificial bee colony (ABC is one of effective technique that can be solved the diverse optimization problem. Hence, ABC based prioritization algorithm is proposed to choose optimal subset of test cases. The results of ABC based prioritization algorithm are compared with sequential and random ordering. Results confirmed that it can address the TCP problem in competent manner.