Dirt Spot Sweeping Random Strategy

The paper presents a new and improved automated random testing technique named as Dirt Spot Sweeping Random (DSSR) strategy based on the rationale that, "when failures lies in the contiguous locations across the input domain, the effectiveness of random testing can be further improved through diversity of test cases". The DSSR strategy selects neighboring values for the subsequent tests on identification of failure. Resultantly, selected values sweep around the failure leading to the discovery of new failures in the vicinity. To evaluate the effectiveness of DSSR strategy a total of 60 classes (35,785 lines of code), each class with 30 x 105 calls, were tested by Random (R), Random+ (R+) and DSSR strategies. T-Test analysis showed significantly better performance of DSSR compared to R strategy in 17 classes and R+ strategy in 9 classes. In the remaining classes all the three strategies performed equally well. Numerically, the DSSR strategy found 43 and 12 more unique failures than R and R+ strategies respectively. This study comprehends that DSSR strategy will have a profound positive impact on the failure- finding ability of R and R+ testing.