Introducing fault-based combinatorial testing to web services

Combinatorial testing is considered effective for finding software faults. It is also efficient, since it keeps the number of tests relatively small. However, there seems to be very little research that considers combinatorial testing as a testing approach for web services. They are commonly tested by injecting fault-causing data perturbations into the network. It may be worthwhile to see if combinatorial testing can complement existing perturbations with the benefits of combinatorial testing. The approach proposed in this paper is called combinatorial fault-based testing. This type of testing combines existing fault-based testing techniques, such as fault injection, with combinatorial testing to attempt to find faults of varying strength within a web service. Combinatorial fault-based testing uses fault injection and helps reduce the problem with combinatorial explosion by focusing solely on fault-based combinations. This raises the following research question: Is there a way to take advantage of the benefits of combinatorial testing for web services assuming that source code will not be available, while minimizing the possibility of a combinatorial explosion? Combinatorial fault-based testing looks very promising for answering this question. As a side effect, it could potentially offer a way to determine the maximum strength of interactions to test for web services.