A Simulation Study on Some Search Algorithms for Regression Test Case Prioritization

Test case prioritization is an approach aiming at increasing the rate of faults detection during the testing phase, by reordering test case execution. Many techniques for regression test case prioritization have been proposed. In this paper, we perform a simulation experiment to study five search algorithms for test case prioritization and compare the performance of these algorithms. The target of the study is to have an in-depth investigation and improve the generality of the comparison results. The simulation study provides two useful guidelines: (1) Two search algorithms, Additional Greedy Algorithm and 2-Optimal Greedy Algorithm, outperform the other three search algorithms in most cases. (2) The performance of the five search algorithms will be affected by the overlap of test cases with regard to test requirements.