Restoration-Based Procedures With Set Covering Heuristics for Static Test Compaction of Functional Test Sequences

The goal of static test compaction is to reduce the number or tests, or the lengths of test sequences, without reducing the fault coverage. Static test compaction that reduces the number of tests was formulated as a set covering problem in order to benefit from the heuristics that exist for solving this problem. This paper applies set covering concepts and heuristics to static test compaction that reduces the length of a functional test sequence. Although set covering is not applicable directly to a single test sequence, it provides a theoretical framework and justification for a particular set of heuristics. The procedure uses a parameter denoted by n to determine the computational effort for computing the sets that are used for making compaction decisions. With n=1, the procedure is equivalent to a static test compaction procedure that does not use set covering. Experimental results demonstrate that shorter test sequences are obtained for n>1 than for n=1. A variation of the static test compaction procedure that produces a monotonic decrease in test sequence length with n is also described.