Test Pair Selection for Test Case Prioritization in Regression Testing for WS-BPEL Programs

Many web services not only communicate through XML-based messages, but also may dynamically modify their behaviors by applying different interpretations on XML messages through updating the associated XML Schemas or XML-based interface specifications. Such artifacts are usually complex, allowing XML-based messages conforming to these specifications structurally complex. Testing should cost-effectively cover all scenarios. Test case prioritization is a dimension of regression testing that assures a program from unintended modifications by reordering the test cases within a test suite. However, many existing test case prioritization techniques for regression testing treat test cases of different complexity generically. In this paper, the authors exploit the insights on the structural similarity of XML-based artifacts between test cases in both static and dynamic dimensions, and propose a family of test case prioritization techniques that selects pairs of test case without replacement in turn. To the best of their knowledge, it is the first test case prioritization proposal that selects test case pairs for prioritization. The authors validate their techniques by a suite of benchmarks. The empirical results show that when incorporating all dimensions, some members of our technique family can be more effective than conventional coverage-based techniques.