An algorithm for merging two classification trees for test case generation

摘要

Software testing is one of the most significant parts of the software development lifecycle. Specification based testing is a widely used testing paradigm for testing and Classification-Tree Method (CTM) is one such systematic technique to generate test cases. Maintenance and evolution of large-scale and complex software systems pose a challenge to all despite the availabilities of stupendous software tools and techniques. Software merging is an idea used in this perspective and it depends on syntax and semantics of several interconnected elements and hence, is time consuming, complicated, and error prone. To test such an entity, a merged CTM can be used to identify the test cases. Usually, it is done manually requiring much time for completion. Hence, there is a need to automate the process to reduce cost and time. In this paper, a new table - Classification with tErminal Class (CEC) table, has been introduced based on Classification Hierarchy Table (CHT) and a new algorithm for automatically merging two classification trees is provided. Finally, procedure for generating test cases from merged classification tree has been proposed and illustrated with an example.