An automatic approach of domain test data generation

It is usually observed in software testing that input data near the boundary of a domain partition are more sensitive to program faults and should be carefully checked. A formalization of this intuitive observation is domain testing. However, as an implementable testing technique, it has some difficulties. One of which:is related to the test data generation. Since domain testing requires that the ON and OFF points be exactly on or near the boundary of a path domain, they can hardly be given manually. But how to automatically generate these test points efficiently is unclear. Traditionally there exist two different ideas. One is to use a static approach that computes the ON and OFF points by a series of algebraic operations. The other is to use a dynamic "search" method that determines an ON point in a "trial-and-error" manner. Each has its advantages and weaknesses. In this paper, we present a combined approach that takes the advantages of both ideas, i.e., it has both algebraic manipulations and a dynamic "search" process in a mixed way. It is shown that this approach is more efficient than others. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.