A new algorithm to Test Suite Reduction based on cluster analysis

Regression testing is a significant activity which occurs during the maintenance level of a software lifecycle. However, it requires a large amount of test cases to test new or modified parts of the software. To address the issue, test suite reduction techniques have been presented. An appropriate technique should generate a minimized test suite which exercises different execution paths within a program while retaining the fault detection capability of the suite admissible. To achieve this, a heuristic algorithm is proposed in this paper. The new algorithm clusters test cases based on the similarity of their execution profiles and sample some representatives to form the reduced test suite. The results of applying the new algorithm to the Siemens suite and comparing to the H algorithm manifest interesting insights into the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.