An approach for test suite selection to validate applications on deployment of COTS upgrades

Typically, COTS undergo frequent upgrades. Organizations while deploying these upgrades ensure the correctness of existing systems by carrying out exhaustive regression tests. This process is typically costly and time-consuming. An efficient approach to regression testing would be to execute a subset of the system test suite that provides sufficient confidence in the system behavior. In that respect, we have developed a test framework that facilitates capturing and modeling of component interactions. These interactions are analyzed to select a subset of test cases to be executed during regression testing. The approach has been applied to a Web-based system and the results obtained are quite promising.