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A Survey of Combinatorial Testing

CHANGHAI NIE, State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University
HARETON LEUNG, Hong Kong Polytechnic University

ACM Computing Surveys, Vol. 43, No. 2, Article 11, Publication date: January 2011.

In this article, we survey the state of the research of CT. In our study, we have collected over 90 key papers related to CT.We classify these papers into eight categories.
(1) Modeling (Model): Studies on identifying the parameters, values, and the interrelationsof parameters of SUT.
(2) Test case generation (Gen): Studies on generating a small test suite effectively.
(3) Constraints (Constr.): Studies on avoiding invalid test cases in the test suite generation.
(4) Failure characterization and diagnosis (Fault): Studies on fixing the detected faults.
(5) Improvement of testing procedures and the application of CT (App.): Studies on practical testing procedure for CT and reporting the results of the CT application.
(6) Prioritization of test cases (Prior.): Studies on the order of test execution to detect faults as early as possible in the most economical way.
(7) Metric (Metric): Studies on measuring the combination coverage of CT and the effectiveness of fault detection.
(8) Evaluation (Eval.): Studies on the degree to which CT contributes to the improvement of software quality.