Towards a Method for Reducing the Test Suites of Database Applications

Database applications are commonly implemented and used in both industry and academia. These complex and rapidly evolving applications often have frequent changes in the source code of the program and the state and structure of the database. This paper describes and empirically evaluates a test suite reduction technique that improves the efficiency of regression testing for database applications by removing redundant tests. The experimental results show that the reduced test suites are between 30% and 80% smaller than the original test suite, thus enabling a decrease in testing time ranging from 7% to 78%. These empirical outcomes suggest that test suite reduction is a viable method for controlling the costs associated with testing rapidly-evolving database applications.