DEO: A Dynamic Event Order Strategy for t-way Sequence Covering Array Test Data Generation

Abstract

Sequence covering array (SCA) generation is an active research area in recent years. Unlike the sequence-less covering arrays (CA), the order of sequence varies in the test case generation process. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art of the SCA strategies, earlier works reported that finding a minimal size of a test suite is considered as an NP-Hard problem. In addition, most of the existing strategies for SCA generation have a high order of complexity due to the generation of all combinatorial interactions by adopting one-test-at-a-time fashion. Reducing the complexity by adopting one-parameter- at-a-time for SCA generation is a challenging process. In addition, this reduction facilitates the supporting for a higher strength of coverage. Motivated by such challenge, this paper proposes a novel SCA strategy called Dynamic Event Order (DEO), in which the test case generation is done using one-parameter-at-a-time fashion. The details of the DEO are presented with a step-by-step example to demonstrate the behavior and show the correctness of the proposed strategy. In addition, this paper makes a comparison with existing computational strategies. The practical results demonstrate that the proposed DEO strategy outperforms the existing strategies in term of minimal test size in most cases. Moreover, the significance of the DEO increases as the number of sequences increases and/ or the strength of coverage increases. Furthermore, the proposed DEO strategy succeeds to generate SCAs up to t=7. Finally, the DEO strategy succeeds to find new upper bounds for SCA. In fact, the proposed strategy can act as a research vehicle for variants future implementation.