Locating a Faulty Interaction in Pair-wise Testing

This article discusses the location of faulty interactions in software testing. We propose an algorithm to generate a test suite that can be used to identify a faulty pair-wise interaction. This approach works as follows. First, a test suite is generated using an existing method for pair-wise testing. Pair-wise testing requires testing all pair-wise interactions but does not guarantee that the faulty interaction can be located. Second, pair-wise interactions that cannot be located by the test suite are enumerated. Finally, test cases are repeatedly added to the test suite until all pair-wise interactions can be located. The results of applying the algorithm to several problem instances show that the test suites obtained using the algorithm are nearly twice as large as those for ordinary pair-wise testing which does not ensure fault locating ability.