Abstract
Covering Arrays CA(N;t,k,v) are combinatorial structures that can be used to define adequate test suites for software testing. The smaller a CA is, the smaller the number of test cases that will be given to test the functionality of a software component in order to identify possible failures. Due to the fact that the construction of CAs of optimal size is a highly combinatorial problem, several approximated strategies have been developed. Some constructions of these strategies can be further improved through a post optimization process. For example, the wild card profile of a CA is the set of symbols that can be modified without changing the properties that define a CA. It has been shown that some CAs can be reduced by merging rows that contain wild cards. This paper presents a Branch and Bound (B&B) strategy that maximizes the number of wild cards in the profile of an already constructed CA. We identify such profiles in 106 CAs of strength t = 2 and alphabets v from 6 to 25. Also, it is shown that for an specific CA(42;2,8,6) different profiles can be obtained; such profiles vary in the number of wild cards and their distribution in the CA.
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Gonzalez-Hernandez, L., Torres-Jiménez, J., Rangel-Valdez, N. (2011). An Exact Approach to Maximize the Number of Wild Cards in a Covering Array. In: Batyrshin, I., Sidorov, G. (eds) Advances in Artificial Intelligence. MICAI 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7094. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25324-9_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25324-9_18
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