Towards Multi-Faceted Test Cases Optimization

The target of software engineering is to produce high quality software product at low cost. Software testing is labour-intensive, ambiguous and error prone activity of software development. How to provide cost-effective strategies for software test cases optimization problem such as classification, minimization, selection, and prioritization has been one of the research focuses in software testing for a long time. Many researchers and academicians have addressed the effectiveness/fitness and optimization of test cases, and obtained many interesting results. However, one issue of paramount importance in software testing i.e. the intrinsic imprecise and uncertainty of test cases fitness, fitness parameters, multi-objective optimization, is left unaddressed. Test cases fitness depends on several parameters. Vagueness of fitness of test cases and their fitness parameters have created the uncertainty in test cases optimization. Cost and adequacy values are incorporated into multi-faceted optimization of test cases. This paper argues test cases optimization requires multi-faceted optimization in order to adequately cater realistic software testing. In this paper, authors have identified several parameters for test cases fitness and multiple objectives for test cases optimization. In addition above, authors have formulated the test cases optimization problem in three different ways using multi-faceted concept. These formulations can be used in future by authors and researchers.