A combinatorial testing strategy for concurrent programs

One approach to testing concurrent programs is called reachability testing, which derives test sequences automatically and on‐the‐fly, without constructing a static model. Existing reachability testing algorithms are exhaustive in that they are intended to exercise all possible synchronization sequences of a concurrent program with a given input. In this paper, we present a new testing strategy, called t ‐way reachability testing, that adopts the dynamic framework of reachability testing but selectively exercises a subset of synchronization sequences. The selection of thesynchronization sequences is based on a combinatorial testing strategy called t ‐way testing. We present an algorithm that implements t ‐way reachability testing, and report the results of several case studies that were conducted to evaluate its effectiveness. The results indicate that t ‐way reachability testing can substantially reduce the number of synchronization sequences exercised during reachability testing while still effectively detecting faults. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.