Software system faults are often caused by unexpected interactions among components. Yet the size of a test suite required to test all possible combinations of interactions can be prohibitive in even a moderately sized project. Instead, we may use pairwise or t-way testing to provide a guarantee that all pairs or t-way combinations of components are tested together. This concept draws on methods used in statistical testing for manufacturing and has been extended to software system testing. A covering array, CA(N; t, k, v) is an N×k array on ν symbols such that every N×t sub-array contains all ordered subsets from v symbols of size t at least once. The properties of these objects, however, do not necessarily satisfy real software testing needs. Instead we examine a less studied object, the mixed level covering array and propose a new object, the variable strength covering array, which provides a more robust environment for software interaction testing. Initial results are presented suggesting that heuristic search techniques are more effective than some of the known greedy methods for finding smaller sized test suites. We present a discussion of an integrated approach for finding covering arrays and discuss how application of these techniques can be used to construct variable strength arrays.
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