A performance evaluation of heuristics-based test case generation methods for software branch coverage

Software testing is an important step in the development of complex systems. The construction of test cases using traditional methods usually requires considerable manual effort. QUEST/Ada - Query Utility Environment for Software Testing of Ada, is a prototype test case generation system that uses various heuristics-based approaches to generate test cases. The system, which is designed for unit testing, generates test cases by monitoring the branch coverage progress and intelligently modifying existing test cases to achieve additional coverage. Three heuristics-based approaches along with a random test case generation method were studied to compare their branch coverage performance. Although some constraints are imposed by the prototype, the framework provides a useful foundation for further heuristics-based test case generation research. The design of the system, the heuristic rules used in the system, and an evaluation of each rule's performance are presented.