Evaluating the Effectiveness of Regression Testing

Abstract

Regression testing is the retesting of a software to check its reliability against the new functionality that is implemented or changes are made to the software. Regression testing plays a significant role to assess the quality of a product that is changed frequently in functionality as expected by the end user of the software. There has been a number of studies on various regression testing techniques as mentioned by Yoo and Harman in their survey but a very few are dedicated to the evaluating regression testing techniques. In this study various methods or schemes are suggested to measure the uniqueness of a test case. The uniqueness measure of a test case is a tool that is utilized to make decision on the effectiveness of various regression test techniques. Finally, building blocks for the construction of a framework are provided in the form of various schemes classified by their level of complexity involved. Concepts and methods that are utilized are already proven by academia and literature that help to devise the schemes or methods in the conducted industrial study. The formulated schemes can be applied to the extracted information in the form of 0, 1's and -1's. The solution given here can be considered as a generalized one for a wide range of industry and academia to facilitate in the decision making with various kind of existing data situations.