Abstract
The multiobjective testing resource allocation problem (MOTRAP) is how to efficiently allocate the finite testing time to various modules, with the aim of optimizing system reliability, testing cost, and testing time simultaneously. To deal with this problem, a common approach is to use multiobjective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) to seek a set of tradeoff solutions between the three objectives. However, such a tradeoff set may contain a substantial proportion of solutions with very low reliability level, which consume lots of computational resources but may be valueless to the software project manager. In this article, a MOTRAP model with a prespecified reliability is first proposed. Then, new lower bounds on the testing time invested in different modules are theoretically deduced from the necessary condition for the achievement of the given reliability, based on which an exact algorithm for determining the new lower bounds is presented. Moreover, several enhanced constraint-handling techniques (ECHTs) derived from the new bounds are successively developed to be combined with MOEAs to correct and reduce the constraint violation. Finally, the proposed ECHTs are evaluated in comparison with various state-of-the-art constraint-solving approaches. The comparative results demonstrate that the proposed ECHTs can work well with MOEAs, make the search focus on the feasible region of the prespecified reliability, and provide the software project manager with better and more diverse, satisfactory choices in test planning.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 9340399 |
Pages (from-to) | 537-551 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation |
Volume | 25 |
Issue number | 3 |
Early online date | 29 Jan 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jun 2021 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 1997-2012 IEEE.
Funding
This work was supported in part by the Anhui Provincial Key Research and Development Program under Grant 202004d07020011; in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant U19B2044; in part by the Ministry of Education in China Project of Humanities and Social Sciences under Grant 19YJC870021 and Grant 18YJC870025; and in part by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant PA2020GDKC0015, Grant PA2019GDQT0008, and Grant PA2019GDPK0072.
Keywords
- Constraint handling
- evolutionary algorithms (EAs)
- multiobjective testing resource allocation
- reliability constraint