SPLBA: An interaction strategy for testing software product lines using the Bat-inspired algorithm

Software product lines (SPLs) represent an engineering method for creating a portfolio of similar software systems for a shared set of software product assets. Owing to the significant growth of SPLs, there is a need for systematic approach for ensuring the quality of the resulting product derivatives. Combinatorial t-way testing (where t indicates the interaction strength) has been known to be effective especially when the number of product´s features and constraints in the SPLs of interest are huge. In line with the recent emergence of Search based Software Engineering (SBSE), this article presents a novel strategy for SPLs tests reduction using Bat-inspired algorithm (BA), called SPLBA. Our experience with SPLBA has been promising as the strategy performed well against existing strategies in the literature.