One of the last types of testing techniques that we learned about this semester is known is Combinatorial Testing. Combinatorial testing is a testing technique that is used for software applications with a lot of different input possibilities and a high complexity. Even if you create a large number of different test cases, you will most likely still miss a test scenario. I’m not the best at explaining what something is, so I did some research in order to find an article that helps describe the aspects of combinatorial testing as well as how to use it and what its benefits are. This website is called testsigma.com
I think that this website does a great job at explaining what combinatorial testing is as well as all of its different benefits. In the article by Shanika Wickramasinghe, it states “Combinatorial testing is a testing method that uses multiple combinations of input parameters to perform testing for a software application. The main goal of combinatorial testing is to make sure that the software product can handle different combinations of test data as input parameters and configuration options.” This means that combinatorial testing takes a bunch of different input parameters, similar to pairwise testing, and uses it to test a bunch of different cases for the program. This can be extremely useful because some of the errors with a program can only be found with specific inputs. I’ve actually had this happen to me before in one of my classes. I wrote a program and testing a bunch of different inputs and they all worked, but when my teacher tried an input I never used, it failed. I think combinational testing is going to be extremely useful for me in the future. I know it seems like combinatorial testing can only be used in certain scenarios so it might be better to not learn it, but it actually has a lot of benefits according to Wickramasinghe:
- Covers a broad range of input combinations using a minimum number of test cases.
- Increases test coverage compared to normal component testing since it always considers multiple input combinations.
- Helps to detect bugs, defects, vulnerabilities, and unexpected outputs that might not be detected during the usual component and regression testing phases.
- Reduces testing effort, cost, and time. (Since combinatorial tests use fewer test cases to cover a wide scope of testing.)
- Identifies issues at the earliest while allowing the team to address and fix those earlier in the software development life cycle.
- Optimizes the testing process by removing unwanted test cases while ensuring that the cost and effort are not wasted on repeating the same test scenarios again and again.
- Helps to test complex software applications with a large number of parameters, settings, and options.
- Reduces the risk of critical defects going unnoticed, which can occur only when handling specific input combinations.
I recommend that everyone tries to use combinatorial testing at least once so they know how it works in case they ever need to use it again in the future to make sure all of their different input possibilities work.
Link: https://testsigma.com/blog/combinatorial-testing/
From the blog CS@Worcester – One pixel at a time by gizmo10203 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.