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Wikipedia / All-pairs testing

In computer science, all-pairs testing or pairwise testing is a combinatorial method of software testing that, for each pair of input parameters to a system (typically, a software algorithm), tests all possible discrete combinations of those parameters. Using carefully chosen test vectors, this can be done much faster than an exhaustive search of all combinations of all parameters by "parallelizing" the tests of parameter pairs.

Rationale

In most cases, a single input parameter or an interaction between two parameters is what causes a program's bugs. Bugs involving interactions between three or more parameters are both progressively less common and also progressively more expensive to find, such testing has as its limit the testing of all possible inputs. Thus, a combinatorial technique for picking test cases like all-pairs testing is a useful cost-benefit compromise that enables a significant reduction in the number of test cases without drastically compromising functional coverage.

. Imagining that the code deals with the conditions taking only two parameters at a time, might reduce the number of needed test cases.

To demonstrate, suppose there are X,Y,Z parameters. We can use a predicate can be a multiset, because there can be multiple parameters having same number of choices.

then the number of tests is typically O(nm), where n and m·

N-wise testing

N-wise testing can be considered the generalized form of pair-wise testing.

The idea is to apply sorting tuple :-

T-wise testing.

The N-wise testing then would just be, all possible combinations from the above formula.

Example

Consider the parameters shown in the table below.'Enabled', 'Choice Type' and 'Category' have a choice range of 2, 3 and 4, respectively. An exhaustive test would involve 24 tests (2 x 3 x 4). Multiplying the two largest values (3 and 4) indicates that a pair-wise tests would involve 12 tests. The pairwise test cases, generated by Microsoft's "pict" tool, are shown below.

See also

Notes