CAST with GAs - automatic test data generation via evolutionary computation

Although it is well understood to be a generally undecidable problem, a number of attempts have been made over the years to develop systems to automatically generate test data to achieve a level of coverage (branch coverage for example). These approaches have ranged at early attempts at symbolic execution to more recent dynamic approaches and, despite their variety (and varying degrees of success), all the systems developed have involved a detailed analysis of the program or system under test. In a departure from this approach, this paper describes a system developed to explore the use of genetic algorithms to generate test data to automatically meet a level of coverage. (5 pages)