Optimal test case generation for boundary value analysis

Abstract Boundary value analysis (BVA) is a common technique in software testing that uses input values that lie at the boundaries where significant changes in behavior are expected. This approach is widely recognized and used as a natural and effective strategy for testing software. Test coverage is one of the criteria to measure how much the software execution paths are covered by the set of test cases. This paper focuses on evaluating test coverage with respect to BVA by defining a metric called boundary coverage distance (BCD). The BCD metric measures the extent to which a test set covers the boundaries. In addition, based on BCD, we consider the optimal test input generation to minimize BCD under the random testing scheme. We propose three algorithms, each representing a different test input generation strategy, and evaluate their fault detection capabilities through experimental validation. The results indicate that the BCD-based approach has the potential to generate boundary values and improve the effectiveness of software testing.