Combinatorial Approach for Automated Platform Diversity Testing

In recent years, product line engineering has been used effectively in many industrial setups to create a large variety of products. One key aspect of product line engineering is to develop re-usable assets often referred to as a platform. Such software platforms are inherently complex due to requirements of providing diverse functionalities, thereby leading to combinatorial test data explosion problem while validating these platforms. In this paper, we present a combinatorial approach for testing varied features and data diversity present within the platform. The proposed solution effectively takes care of complex interdependencies among diversity features and generates only valid combinations for test scenario. We also developed a prototype tool based on our proposed approaches to automate the platform testing. As part of our case study, we have used our prototype to validate a software platform widely being used across Philips Medical Systems (PMS) products. Initial results confirm that our approach significantly improves the overall platform testing process by reducing testing effort and improve the quality of the platform by detecting all interaction faults.