Enhanced Constraint Handling for Reliability-Constrained Multiobjective Testing Resource Allocation
针对多目标测试资源分配问题中低可靠性解浪费计算资源的问题，提出带预设可靠性的模型，推导测试时间下界并开发增强约束处理技术，帮助软件项目经理获得更优的测试计划方案。
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.