Making effective carbon-box testing technique using prioritised-selected test cases driven combinatorial approach

Nethravathi Rippika (), Monika Rani Golla () and Sangharatna Godboley ()
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Nethravathi Rippika: National Institute of Technology Warangal
Monika Rani Golla: National Institute of Technology Warangal
Sangharatna Godboley: National Institute of Technology Warangal

International Journal of System Assurance Engineering and Management, 2025, vol. 16, issue 3, No 22, 1313-1338

Abstract: Abstract Test cases are produced using combinatorial testing tools automatically. The main strategy using in the existing system is, to improve the branch coverage by using Random values as input values. This relates to the result of the actual fact that, they get constantly poor branch coverage because, the boundary values which are corner cases have not been taken into consideration. To overcome this problem, we introduce a newly developed testing methodology called Carbon-Box Testing in this paper. The working of a very light White-Box test strategy in conjunction with more Black-Box test strategies can be supported by the term Carbon. Dictionary testing uses its input values which are boundary variables as sample inputs, and these are retrieved statically from the program to improve branch coverage. Considering that using the Dictionary values alone will not result in the highest Branch coverage, we will alternatively evaluate Random values and the combination of Random and Dictionary values to provide the test input values. The actual Linux processes ids represent starting values, and to generate many test inputs. To optimize these test inputs values we use one popular black-box testing method that is pair-wise testing, often known as 2-way testing in a combinatorial testing, By evaluating every possible combination of input parameters in pairs, it can find errors that could go undetected in normal testing using a method known as pair-wise testing. It’s a quick and efficient technique to improve test coverage. Mainly, we describe to produce test inputs from Random analysis values, Dictionary analysis values, and the union of Random and Dictionary numbers with and without pair-wise testing values in order to achieve best Branch coverage. It is to be noted that, all the test cases cannot be run with pair-wise technique since it will be time consuming and combinatorial explosion may happen. Therefore, we propose prioritisation and selection techniques in our approach to make the approach more effective. Our method’s efficacy has been assessed using multiple baseline-initiated experimental reviews. Overall, the empirical results indicate that the combination of Random and Dictionary tests along with Pair-wise analysis generates the best results out of all the methods. In conclusion, Carbon-Box Testing represents a novel synthesis of Black-Box and White-Box testing methodologies tailored to optimize branch coverage in software testing. This approach offers a structured yet flexible framework for enhancing test effectiveness and reliability in software development processes. Our proposed RDP configuration is outperformed on 50 programs as compared to other configurations in Phase-I, Phase-II and Phase-III with 86%, 76% and 80% respectively.

Keywords: Combinatorial testing; White-Box testing; Black-Box testing; Carbon-Box testing; Random test case generation (RTCG); Dictionary test case generation (DTCG); Fusion of random and dictionary test case generation (FRDTCG); Pair-wise testing; Line coverage; Branch coverage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s13198-024-02650-y

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