Test data reduction based on dominance relations of target statements

Traditional methods of generating test data may result in redundancy of test data, which brings many troubles to software testing. In order to solve the redundancy of test data, this study proposed a novel approach of generating test data by reducing target statements based on dominant relations. First, basic concepts and principles concerning dominance are listed. Then, an approach is proposed to reduce target statements according to their dominant relations. Finally, test suite covering the reduced set of target statements is generated by a genetic algorithm. The generated test suite can also cover all original target statements, which is guaranteed by the proposed strategy. We applied the method to nine benchmark programs, and compared with traditional and greedy methods. The experimental results show that our method can not only reduce redundancy, but also improve the efficiency of generating test data.