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Scaling Regression Testing to Large Software Systems
Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations
of Software Engineering (FSE 2004)
November 2004, pp. 241-252
Alessandro Orso, Nanjuan Shi, and Mary Jean Harrold
Abstract
When software is modified during development and maintenance, it is regression
tested to provide confidence that the changes did not introduce unexpected errors
and that the new features behave as expected.
One important problem in regression testing is how to select a subset of the test
cases from the test suite used to test the original version of the software,
when testing a modified version of the software. Regression-test-selection techniques
address this problem. Safe regression-test-selection techniques select every test case
in the test suite that may behave differently in the original and modified versions of
the software. Among existing safe regression testing techniques, efficient techniques
are often too imprecise and achieve little savings in testing effort, whereas precise
techniques are too expensive when used on large systems. This paper presents a new
regression-test-selection technique for Java programs that is safe, precise, and
yet scales to large systems. It also presents a tool that implements the technique
and studies performed on a set of subjects ranging from 70 to over 500 KLOC.
The studies show that our technique can efficiently reduce the regression testing
effort and, thus, achieve considerable savings.
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