UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Automated Realistic Test Input Generation and Cost Reduction in Service-centric System Testing

Bozkurt, M; (2013) Automated Realistic Test Input Generation and Cost Reduction in Service-centric System Testing. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London). Green open access

[thumbnail of m.bozkurt_thesis_final.pdf] PDF
m.bozkurt_thesis_final.pdf
Available under License : See the attached licence file.

Download (7MB)

Abstract

Service-centric System Testing (ScST) is more challenging than testing traditional software due to the complexity of service technologies and the limitations that are imposed by the SOA environment. One of the most important problems in ScST is the problem of realistic test data generation. Realistic test data is often generated manually or using an existing source, thus it is hard to automate and laborious to generate. One of the limitations that makes ScST challenging is the cost associated with invoking services during testing process. This thesis aims to provide solutions to the aforementioned problems, automated realistic input generation and cost reduction in ScST. To address automation in realistic test data generation, the concept of Service-centric Test Data Generation (ScTDG) is presented, in which existing services used as realistic data sources. ScTDG minimises the need for tester input and dependence on existing data sources by automatically generating service compositions that can generate the required test data. In experimental analysis, our approach achieved between 93% and 100% success rates in generating realistic data while state-of-the-art automated test data generation achieved only between 2% and 34%. The thesis addresses cost concerns at test data generation level by enabling data source selection in ScTDG. Source selection in ScTDG has many dimensions such as cost, reliability and availability. This thesis formulates this problem as an optimisation problem and presents a multi-objective characterisation of service selection in ScTDG, aiming to reduce the cost of test data generation. A cost-aware pareto optimal test suite minimisation approach addressing testing cost concerns during test execution is also presented. The approach adapts traditional multi-objective minimisation approaches to ScST domain by formulating ScST concerns, such as invocation cost and test case reliability. In experimental analysis, the approach achieved reductions between 69% and 98.6% in monetary cost of service invocations during testing

Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Title: Automated Realistic Test Input Generation and Cost Reduction in Service-centric System Testing
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Language: English
Keywords: service-centric test data generation, realistic test data, cost-aware test suite minimisation, multi-objective service selection, SOA research trends, service-oriented architecture
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1400300
Downloads since deposit
615Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item