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Empirical analysis of a genetic algorithm-based stress test technique

Published: 12 July 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Evolutionary testing denotes the use of evolutionary algorithms, e.g., Genetic Algorithms (GAs), to support various test automation tasks. Since evolutionary algorithms are heuristics, their performance and output efficiency can vary across multiple runs. Therefore, there is a strong need to empirically investigate the capacity of evolutionary test techniques to achieve the desired objectives (e.g., generate stress test cases) and their scalability in terms of the complexity of the System Under Test (SUT), the inputs, and the control parameters of the search algorithms. In a previous work, we presented a GA-based UML-driven, stress test technique aimed at increasing chances of discovering faults related to network traffic in distributed real-time software. This paper reports a carefully-designed empirical study which was conducted to analyze and improve the applicability, efficiency and effectiveness of the above GA-based stress test technique. Detailed stages and objectives of the empirical analysis are reported. The findings of the study are furthermore used to better calibrate the parameters of the GA-based stress test technique.

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cover image ACM Conferences
GECCO '08: Proceedings of the 10th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation
July 2008
1814 pages
ISBN:9781605581309
DOI:10.1145/1389095
  • Conference Chair:
  • Conor Ryan,
  • Editor:
  • Maarten Keijzer
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 12 July 2008

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Author Tags

  1. empirical analysis
  2. genetic algorithms
  3. stress testing

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  • (2019)Machine learning-assisted performance testingProceedings of the 2019 27th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3338906.3342484(1187-1189)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2019
  • (2017)A Multi-objective Metaheuristic Approach to Search-Based Stress Testing2017 IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology (CIT)10.1109/CIT.2017.19(55-62)Online publication date: Aug-2017
  • (2016)Improving stress search based testing using a hybrid metaheuristic approach2016 XLII Latin American Computing Conference (CLEI)10.1109/CLEI.2016.7833374(1-11)Online publication date: Oct-2016
  • (2015)A Survey on Load Testing of Large-Scale Software SystemsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2015.244534041:11(1091-1118)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2015
  • (2015)The Optimization of Solar Drying of Grain by Using a Genetic AlgorithmInternational Journal of Green Energy10.1080/15435075.2014.89010612:12(1222-1231)Online publication date: 11-Jul-2015
  • (2014)A Search-Based Approach for Cost-Effective Software Test Automation Decision Support and an Industrial Case StudyProceedings of the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification, and Validation Workshops10.1109/ICSTW.2014.34(302-311)Online publication date: 31-Mar-2014
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  • (2011)Evaluating improvements to a meta-heuristic search for constrained interaction testingEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-010-9135-716:1(61-102)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2011
  • (2010)Today/future importance analysisProceedings of the 12th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation10.1145/1830483.1830733(1357-1364)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2010
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